Can you talk us through GameBeats and what it can offer customers?
I think we’ve developed a simple proposition for our customers, who we’ve been talking to all the way through. What we’re offering them is unlimited social media graphics that they can add animation to, publish in any language and place on any social media platform – all for a fixed monthly fee. But we’ve also got a platform that I think is super intuitive. Some of our customers are telling us that they are really time-poor and they don’t necessarily have people with the training to create social media graphics but our platform is very easy to use.
How have customers used GameBeats so far?
Our customers want something that’s flexible enough to be able to develop both the simple stuff, like scores, scorers, half-time and league tables, but also something that’s a bit quirky and different. You can do that with GameBeats, so if you want a graphic tied around a VAR decision, a disallowed goal, some amazing technique or the boots Cristiano Ronaldo was wearing then you can create all that, publish it and make it really compelling content for your users.
How important is social media when it comes to driving fan engagement?
In the modern sports media marketplace, I think it’s absolutely essential that clubs, federations and publishers use social media to drive fan engagement. It was best summed up for me in a recent article by Stephen Bourke in ZDnet who was talking about fan engagement. If you imagine you have compelling content – that drives followship, which, in turn, allows you to invest in some digital assets. The digital assets give you revenue, sponsorship and partnership opportunities, which ultimately everyone wants, and then you can reinvest in the compelling content, of which social media is the most important and biggest bit.
Are clubs generally more focused on growing their global fanbase than attracting people to stadiums?
Clubs have a dual strategy. If you take the example of a current Premier League club, they might have a capacity of maybe 50,000 and on a matchday they would generate between £2 million and £3 million roughly. Over a season, let’s call that £50 million, but that club also has 50 million Facebook followers worldwide and if they can generate a pound a month from all those followers then you can start to see that what they can do internationally is huge and that’s where social media and content is becoming really important.
How does GameBeats fit in to Sportradar’s range of storytelling-focused products?
We’ve always developed products in sports media that are storytelling but what we’ve added now with GameBeats is these amazing features and the needs that they meet. So, when we speak to a publisher, a broadcaster, a club or a federation, we’re saying to them, ‘what are your needs?’ and ‘would you like to generate significant fan engagement on social media?’ If the answer to that is yes then we have GameBeats for you and we can start to talk through features like the unlimited graphics, published to any site in any language for a fixed fee and that’s the main difference, we’re trying to elevate the story to be more needs-driven rather than features-driven.
How much is social media continuing to change the way people consume sport?
It’s changed the landscape dramatically. For example, when I support my team, Arsenal, I’ll watch that match for 90 minutes. I’ll engage with my friends during that but ultimately, I’ll be pretty fixed on one screen. My son though, who’s 12, will come down and watch the warm-ups, he’ll want to know what boots Toni Kroos has on, what technique Neymar has done, Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal celebration. He’ll also have two or three screens open at the same time and when there’s a goal, he’ll pause the live TV, record it and publish it to Instagram because all he cares about are the key moments. The rest he’ll just have on in the background and I think there’s a real trend coming our way for these ‘amateur publishers’ who might follow players rather than teams and only care about the key moments rather than the match. That’s going to be quite dramatic for our industry.
Source: GMB / Sportradar
