Enabling a Video-Centric Fan Experience

As we highlighted in our recent blog post,the impact of Covid on sports is as well-documented as it has been devastating, and the total cost to the sports industry is still being calculated. Rights-holders are looking to engage with fans who are starved of the ‘match-day experience’ while delivering value to their commercial partners despite past and current limitations. At the same time, many of these developments have shifted the way sports organizations communicate with their fans, way beyond COVID.In order to support this shift, we have created an out-of-the-box solution aimed at enabling sports organizations to get started on their new video strategy, by using a video-centric service that delivers a premium and tailored fan experience. Accedo enables sports organizations to:

‍Create a video-centric hub for their brand

‍Using Accedo's solutions, rights holders, federations, and clubs can quickly deliver a video-centric hub for their brand to augment and enhance any existing video and social media strategies. This enables you to create a digital space for fans where they can access and engage with all of the content in one hub. This makes it easier for fans to keep up with the latest news and action, no matter where they are located.

‍Maximize new revenue opportunities

Accedo helps to open up the opportunity to monetize across core revenue streams, such as ticketing, merchandising, sponsorship by linking to those web platforms from within the video service. It also enables monetization of direct video revenue streams.As our VP North America, Mrugesh Desai highlighted, it can be extremely difficult to gain exposure and monetization on YouTube. Launching your own OTT video service puts you back in control and opens up much better monetization opportunities. This could include subscription fees, pay-per-view for more premium content, or integrating advertising into the video service. Because Accedo Play – Sports also includes the ability to analyze your audience, these can be tailored to your individual fans to increase value for advertisers.

‍Expand their reach

‍By launching their own OTT video service, sports organizations can quickly expand their reach. Accedo Play – Sports means you can choose to reach fans anywhere in the world and across multiple platforms. Aggregating all of your content together also has the potential to reach new audiences. Someone might not want to watch live matches but is interested in learning more about the players and their lives, for example. Accedo Play – Sports also ensures that you can deliver a high-quality user experience and scale as audiences grow.

‍Increase engagement

‍With covid forcing fans out of the stadiums, it has been challenging for sports organizations to engage with fans, as well as delivering that engagement for sponsors and advertisers. Creating a branded video-centric space for a range of content, from live matches to documentaries, can significantly increase fan engagement. Adding data analytics makes it possible to target specific content recommendations that a fan is most likely to enjoy.As services mature, the Accedo Play - Sports solution will enable additional advanced features to support the growth and further engagement. This includes ‘next generation’ content formats such as Augmented Reality, game statistics, and sponsor activations which can bring a new level of interaction to content.

‍Sports beyond the pandemic

‍Covid may have totally shifted sports-centric behaviors in a way that no one could have anticipated. However, many of the changes we are seeing now would likely have happened in the long term. Sports organizations should be looking for short-term solutions that help overcome the challenges brought by the pandemic, while at the same time looking at long-term strategies to increase engagement and monetization away from the stadium.