MOST SUCCESSFUL SPORTS EVENT BROADCAST
America’s Cup Event – 36th America’s Cup
First sailed in 1851, the America’s Cup is the oldest international sporting competition and has only been won by four countries.
It features the world’s best sailors representing their nations in the fastest and most spectacular yachts, the Cup is a sailing event that transcends sailing.
The 36th America’s Cup presented by PRADA was sailed in Auckland New Zealand from December2020-March2021 in an entirely new class of foiling monohull, the AC75.
Benefitting from significant technological innovation, the production set new standards in terms of the scope of coverage, graphics, audio and camera systems.
Distribution focused on free-to-air networks and major channels whilst reserving digital rights to allow the Cup to live stream on its own website and social media channels with unrestricted digital highlights across all platforms.
The 36th America’s Cup is the most watched Cup ever. Its dedicated audience of 68.2m is 3.2x that of the 35th America’s Cup in Bermuda. The event reached a total global TV and streaming audience of 941m.
Social media delivered 715m over the campaign at an engagement rate of 7%. Live streaming grew the record TV audience by 19%.
beIN MEDIA GROUP – UEFA EURO 2020
beIN MEDIA GROUP (beIN) is a global sports and entertainment broadcaster operating in 43 countries across five continents – passionately striving to provide unforgettable moments. In Middle East & North Africa (MENA), beIN broadcast the long-awaited UEFA EURO 2020 – the second biggest football competition after the FIFA World Cup – live and exclusively to its millions of viewers and subscribers across 24 countries. This was the first major live sporting event since March 2020 and beIN had a tremendous responsibility to reignite the passion for sports in the region.
In summary, beIN’s MENA channels saw a match average of 18.8 million views with a high of 64.4 million for the final and a cumulative total of almost 1 billion views over the competition. France, Italy, Germany, and Portugal all saw an average 30 million+ views for their matches. Other successes included specially curated TV studios with state-of-the-art facilities and technological advancements; exclusive and bespoke programming; 15-hours of live daily studio coverage; expert commentary and analysis from world-class international and Arab talent; positioning 18 on-the-ground reporters in 11 European countries; and much more – all while simultaneously broadcasting the rest of beIN’s substantial summer of sports portfolio and entertainment offering.
Chilli Pepper TV – Rotterdam Hickstead Grand Prix Challenge
Chilli Pepper TV, a small independent production company initiated and produced The Rotterdam Hickstead Grand Prix Challenge: A Covid safe International equestrian sporting event featuring Olympic and five-star riders and horses. Filmed in UK and the Netherlands, live graphics and scoring was processed in Germany with live expert commentary from Holland and the UK, it was then streamed over two days from the UK. The audience were able to participate in the competition by scoring each dressage test via an app safely from their homes. A truly international effort to keep this sport where men and women compete on an equal footing alive during the depths of the global pandemic. The program drew international audiences of over 44,000 viewers.
ITTF Foundation – World Table Tennis Day
24 hours full of World Table Tennis Day on April 6, 2021; Together with hundreds of groups celebrating their passion for table tennis individually in various places all over the world (where physically possible), a 24 hour online stream was set up to demonstrate how the sport can be enjoyed and celebrated even with physical distance, whenever you are, wherever you are.The online stream was designed with our table tennis community at heart. Historical matches that kept the blood of hardcore table tennis fans boiling, meet and greet session with raising Ping-Pong heroes, athlete home workouts for lightweight players… The 24 hour online stream had something for everyone, regardless of their level and involvement with the sport. For this year’s World Table Tennis Day, the ITTF Foundation drew special attention to gender equality with our FEMpowerment campaign. The 24 hour online stream featured workshops and seminars focusing on female empowerment, as well as celebrity coaches sharing their experience in increasing female participation in table tennis and engaging female athletes.
LiveScore – The new home of free-to-air football
In the past year, LiveScore successfully revolutionised their popular app by launching and integrating a free-to-air football live streaming service that is forcing the industry to sit up and take notice.
Capitalising on its standing as one of the world’s leading real-time sports updates and results providers, LiveScore identified a gap in the market to provide accessible, safe, trusted, reliable and legal live streaming for football fans in the UK and Ireland.
Within two months of launching in June 2020, over 600,000 unique users (60% of UK and Ireland mobile app users) visited the LiveScore app to view a match, with individual audiences peaking at 147,000 unique viewers. By the end of the 2020/21 season, over 1.4 million unique users had watched a match.
LiveScore streamed nearly 1,250 matches throughout the 2020-21 season, underpinned by 306 matches from Italy’s Serie A campaign. LiveScore also carried live streams from the English Premier League, after acquiring rights to simulcast 31 Saturday 3pm kick off fixtures exclusively for LiveScore app users in Nigeria.
The next step of development will see LiveScore acquire new rights and continue to deliver content globally, unlocking their engaged and active audience across 200 territories worldwide.
