LiveScore has bolstered its portfolio by acquiring the streaming rights to a large number of matches from the biggest leagues in the world as it expands its global ambitions. The Playknox spoke with Rob Brown, Head of Media to know more. Excerpts:
Tell us about your recent partnerships
Our most recent rights agreement was for the FIFA Club World Cup, for which we streamed every match, free-to-air to our users in Ireland. We also have a 3 year Champions League live rights agreement through to 2024 for exclusive, free-to-air coverage of every match in Ireland. Saran Media coordinated these deals on our behalf, and the team have been instrumental in building our rights portfolio since we launched our live streaming service in 2020.
Are you planning of working with any other leagues this year?
We’re always very open to working with new partners on the distribution of live content anywhere around the globe. The FIFA Club World Cup agreement was turned around in a short timeframe which is testament to the efforts and flexibility of everybody involved and a nod to the automated, data-powered workflow, which powers our live streaming delivery. We’ve already streamed over 2,000 live matches across 20 competitions since launch, whilst the backbone of our service – providing scores – has covered over 100,000 matches in the last 12 months alone. We believe this ability to handle events at scale and reach an existing, highly engaged, football-first audience offers something different within the market.
How do you monetize the free to air model?
We’re in the fortunate position to have a large global audience who engage with LiveScore daily for all the latest scores, stats and content. As an existing free, ad funded product, a free-to-air live streaming proposition was a natural extension for us and we simply look at this as an additional way to deliver great content to users, supported with highly sought after video ad placements. All our in-match advertising is served via Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) which has been a huge success, both in terms of direct deals and programmatically.
Ronaldo is LiveScore Official Global Brand Ambassador. What’s the strategy behind this?
We’re always striving to be the best we can be, and we think in the same terms with our partnerships. The global brand ambassadorship with Ronaldo and the streaming of Champions League in Ireland are great examples of this, however we also believe in using our brand and audience reach to elevate talent and competitions which aren’t as high profile. LiveScore continuing to play a key role in this area is just as exciting as the Ronaldo and Champions League partnerships and is something we’re extremely proud of.
LiveScore is a relatively new entrant into the broadcast realm. What is the vision for the future?
We’re relatively new to the live streaming space, however we’ve been keeping our users updated on scores for 25 years, launching as a first-of-its kind service in 1998. Our vision for the future is to provide the most comprehensive sports entertainment experience for every sport to every fan globally. Today, we’re a football-first service, however we absolutely see a future where we become the go to destination for other sports too.
Where are most of your viewers from?
I’ve been at LiveScore for over 5 years and I still pinch myself at times when looking at how global our audience is. We genuinely have users engaging from every market around the world from Australia to Zambia and it’s fascinating to be able to observe the players, teams and competitions which drive the most interest in different countries. In fact, much of this insight helps us derive which content is most appropriate per market, and at what price. Europe, Africa and Asia are continents in which we have particularly strong audience reach.
What is the viewer’s behaviour observed by you? How fast does it change?
Quite simply, audience behaviour evolves as quickly as you’re able to innovate. Prior to launching our streaming service in 2020, the concept of watching a live game or highlights with LiveScore wouldn’t have entered our users’ minds. Yet now, we see hundreds of thousands of users consuming live and on-demand content with us every week. Seeing this uptick in engagement is incredibly motivating for the whole team, and combined with our vision, it’s really what underpins our ambition to provide the best sports entertainment experience in the world.
