Using Digital Video to Engage Sports Fans
When arenas were closed to audiences, how did sports organizations maintain the emotional bond between fans and their sporting heroes? As the pandemic created physical distance, digital services stepped in to narrow the gap and – in the case of video streaming – found new ways to enhance the fan experience.
And it’s not a temporary measure; video streaming has now become a differentiator that’s helped sports brands attract new fan demographics and expand their reach beyond the physical boundaries of the pitch, court, or race track.
If you’re looking to increase engagement, three Brightcove customers recently shared six best practices they use to help make their fans feel they’re in the middle of the action, wherever they are.
1. Give Fans What They Want!
Fans know that technology and connectivity exists for live streaming and audience interaction. If you don’t offer an official channel, they’ll look for other avenues to fulfill their desire to interact. As Rocky Chow, Chief Community Officer for the Hong Kong Rugby Union, says: “Having accessible content that fans can watch before, during, and after a game is important to us. It also gives us a good opportunity to identify who our fans are and tweak the content to suit them.”
2. Tell Your Story
Everyone involved in sports makes an emotional investment. One way to acknowledge and reward this is by using video streaming to share how you’re investing in your fans. As Cody Winnell, Media & Communications Manager at Harness Racing Victoria, explains: “Just being able to tell your story in a certain way and have some control over your narrative and celebrate everything we know as passionate people in our industry. It’s something video streaming has really allowed us to do.”
3. Dive into the Detail
Your story is so much more than your brand or team’s performance. Harness Racing Victoria uses previously inaccessible stories to reach a whole new demographic – as Cody illustrates beautifully: “We had a historically aging demographic and a linear television channel. We couldn’t bring fans to live shows where they could see the drivers, the trainers, the beautiful horses and showcase their back-stories. So we introduced new digital streaming services. Now, engagement has been through the roof – the 18 to 35 age group is now our fastest growing demographic.”
4. Speed Up the Socials
Tennis is a fast game, and fans want the latest updates just as quickly. As Supervising Producer for Live Events at Tennis Australia, John O’Neil is acutely aware of the power and value of delivering rapid stats and experiences. “One of the big things that has been of great value to us is getting content into our socials as quickly as possible. We need to, because that’s what fans want. What we see is something that pops up on a fan’s Twitter or Facebook feed leads to engagement with the website, broadcaster, or YouTube channel. And that becomes a commercial opportunity as well.”
5. Maximize Multi-level Engagement
With video streaming expanding audiences and providing new experiences that fans love, organizations that combine in-person and streaming services are seeing incredible returns. Rocky Chow explains the difference it’s made for Hong Kong Rugby Union: “Fans now are getting a real-life experience as well as engaging content. While the game’s happening, you can do campaigns to engage the people watching and create more activations. Having had two years of technology and looking at ways to make it work on OTT, we can now put it back into the live environment.”
6. Offer Exclusive Content
With every phone a broadcasting device, real value comes from content fans can’t get elsewhere. Exclusive footage has been especially valuable for John O’Neil at Tennis Australia: “There’s a breakpoint you need to get to so the return on investment starts to roll in. Where we got this is by offering something that was exclusive on our platform: behind the scenes coverage. Some of it we show in the arena but what we’ve done is make the whole feed available on OTT. It’s an exclusive offer – that fans want and love – and that gives us a point of difference.”
Get more game-changing video tips by watching our webinar “Is Streaming the New Arena for Sports?”.

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**OTT is booming **
Traffic is high and growing rapidly on connected devices (CTV). This high traffic, in addition to the uncluttered, high quality experience, is driving up CPMs. Due to the premium nature of their content, Brightcove customers have even reported CPMs between $25-$70, surpassing the range observed by eMarketer of $19.84 to $28.33 from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018.
In the competitive and crowded market of streaming services, these high CPMs, along with a lower barrier to entry for viewers, make ad-supported models attractive for media companies. Even HBO, which has historically been known for its lack of ads, has announced that it will be including ads with its HBO Max offering in 2021, according to Reuters. Agencies like Mediacom are even launching divisions specializing in OTT with smart TVs and gaming consoles as their core focus.
For Brightcove, the ANZ region has been a leading indicator for what’s to come for digital advertising. The ANZ market is dominated by free to air Broadcasters and non paywalled content, which has forced leadership and innovation in the space. So we turned to our Australian colleagues, customers and partners to weigh in on some global OTT advertising challenges and opportunities, starting with IAB Australia CEO, Gai Le Roy,
“The Australian market has seen a huge surge in CTV investment over the last 12 months with the percentage of local media owners’ video revenue for big screen inventory increasing from 23% to 40%. The increase in trading has been driven by a combination of higher consumption and agencies embracing the opportunity of buying inventory in high quality environments often with first party data that can help replace reach that may have been eroded by shrinking linear TV audiences.”
OTT advertising still has challenges
There has been a major gap between the tracking, reporting and targeting available on desktop versus what’s available on CTV, with mobile falling somewhere in the middle. This has led to lower fill rates on CTV compared to other devices. While there are inherent measurement challenges in OTT environments, this inventory is subject to the same scrutiny as traditional online video advertising. It’s important for buyers and sellers to understand this and come to the table with the right expectations. One common example is that some advertisers have been reluctant to buy inventory that doesn’t include viewability or doesn’t let them drop a cookie.
“The value of being seen in an uncluttered, big-screen environment vastly outweighs the nearly non-existent value of having a viewability metric on a CTV, but buyers are still slow to change,” says Mark Stanton, VP, International Product Management at Brightcove.
**Things are improving **
New standards: In response, leaders in the space have begun investing in initiatives designed to alleviate the problem, like the IAB’s Open Measurement SDK. Smart TVs are also getting easier to work with. Teams around the industry are building universal HTML5 apps that work across Samsung, LG, Playstation, etc. to further encourage standardization. However, these efforts are lost if buyers do not get on board.
Buyers are loosening up: Although buyers don’t get the granular reporting they are accustomed to on the web, they are loosening their requirements as they see the opportunity in OTT. While there are still technical limitations, buyers have become more accepting that an ad on a TV is inherently viewable. Some DSPs have made updates to their algorithms to detect whether inventory is coming from a CTV and evaluate it differently from web and app. Other factors, such as Google phasing out cookies and restrictions on user tracking imposed by GDPR, will help drive action. The technologies used to track users that are unavailable in CTV environments will soon be unavailable on the web as well, forcing buyers to adapt.
Juliette Stead, Senior Vice President, APAC for video advertising platform Telaria weighed in saying, “BVOD (broadcast video on demand) is 100% viewable.  Most buyers now appreciate that viewability vendors simply don’t have a consistent product solution for CTV. The need for viewability measurement across CTV has generally decreased among savvy buyers who recognise the power, value and long term benefit of television, and who are safe in the knowledge that curated, professionally produced content which is 100% viewable will provide an effective environment for their brand. BVOD generally, and CTV in particular, has seen a significant increase in demand from a broad range of advertiser categories over the past 24 months, and I expect to see a further increase in investment over coming years.”
Advancements in audience data: Media companies are providing more context for content beyond just name and genre; leading companies are even using AI indexing on content. Many broadcasters have been building out their audience data on CTV. However, agency CTV data is still limited.
“The industry is developing new ways of measuring audiences to both verify audience data as well as evolve co-viewing estimations. Locally three quarters of AVOD audiences are watching content with another person for at least half of their viewing sessions,” confirms Gai Le Roy, IAB Australia.
Limited agency data can be viewed as both a positive and a negative for media companies: It’s good in that if agencies want targeting, they need to buy using the media company’s data. But it’s bad in that if agencies are buying programmatically using their own data, CTV inventory will get overlooked. In comes third-party data.
Third-party measurement and data providers like Nielsen, OzTAM, and Moat are actively trying to solve this dilemma with solutions like co-viewing measurement and by leveraging manufacturer data from vendors like Roku. Things like global scale and how this data is transacted upon still need to be sorted out, but this effort represents progress nonetheless.
Peter Henning, Principal Consultant at Traffic Software, who has worked extensively with major broadcaster TVNZ expresses, “It will be interesting to see the innovation that OTT publishers and technology vendors can achieve with first party data ‘logged in and federated’ solutions, that are secure and scalable.”
According to Julliette Stead, “At Telaria, we work with a number of Australian and New Zealand broadcasters – Seven West Media, Nine Entertainment, Foxtel, Ten, SBS, TVNZ and Mediaworks. All have a data capture strategy in place, and we have integrated with publisher DMPs in order to best segment BVOD supply for targeting purposes across all devices, including CTV. In addition, we are able to ingest content metadata for show specific or category targeting. This allows broadcasters to create solutions to the many differing needs presented by brands for broad and targeted reach campaigns alike.”
There’s still a ways to go
“Innovation is happening on multiple complimentary fronts in OTT to increase the value proposition for advertisers. These innovations need to integrate with a server side ad insertion foundation to offer a viable product pathway for OTT publishers,” says Henning. “Consumers now expect a quality viewing experience and it is vital that the industry pivots in how we deliver marketing messages to provide interactive, contextually relevant experiences.”
At Brightcove, we’ve been using our unique position in the industry to help solve these tough challenges. Among other efforts, we’ve been investigating how to improve the data available from CTV Server-Side Ad Insertion – both the data about the user that’s available to the ad decisioning system and the data about the ads served (or not served) that’s available to the publisher. We’re keeping these considerations in mind in order to enhance our SSAI measurement and to optimize OTT apps with flexible monetization.

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What happens when you take a highly creative, unique, and resilient group of people and give them a stage to truly celebrate and share their authentic selves? For niche streaming services like Revry TV®, you get a chance to cultivate a diverse community of liberated storytellers.
As the world becomes increasingly digital, the opportunities for certain communities to create, share, and watch content tailored to their interests are becoming more readily available, giving a voice to those who were unable to tell their stories before. For members of the LGBTQ community, this rang especially true when Revry launched the first ever queer streaming service, Revry TV, with unique content created by queer people for queer people.
With a goal of creating a one-stop shop, Revry introduced a global platform powered by Brightcove that would act as the foundation for queer content creators everywhere, streaming everything from original television series, top music videos and binge-worthy podcasts.
As important as it was for Revry to be the first in the history of streaming media to create a safe space for the LGBTQ community to share their stories, they also sought to create a premium streaming experience for their audience – an experience that was capable of reaching people from every corner of the globe to connect, inspire, and celebrate a diverse community.
A community that bonds over one key value in life: being “unapologetically” yourself.
Through Brightcove’s powerful streaming technology, Revry is able to spread this message, along with some truly creative content, to over 225 million homes in more than 110 countries around the world. And for those concerned about reaching into their pockets, Revry partnered with Brightcove to expand its subscription offerings, giving viewers options as simple as free with ads or pay-to-play monthly memberships.
Video has proven time and time again to be one of the most powerful tools to help give individuals a voice in a noisy world. And with Brightcove’s unmatched scalability, the dream of bringing authentic and affordable entertainment to audiences everywhere is a dream that can be realized.

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The coronavirus pandemic has proven to be an evolutionary event for streaming video as millions of new users, following strict shelter-in-place edicts, turned to streaming video for entertainment, news, remote learning and work. That’s one of the findings from Brightcove’s Q1 2020 Global Video Index.
Media and entertainment trends included a surge of viewing on computers and connected TVs and a pause in the growth of share of viewing on mobile devices after six consecutive quarters.
Video views globally increased nearly 23% for entertainment, news and sports properties. In North America, views were up 19% and time watching increased 21%. Asia-Pac saw a 67% increase in views with, Australia/New Zealand up 39%, with a 31% jump in time watched.
The increases were even higher in Europe, where views were up 58% and time watched increased 43%.
COVID-19 drove big gains in news consumption
Some of the biggest gains were, unsurprisingly, in news content.
As the COVID-19 pandemic raced across the world, consumers increasingly turned to streaming video sources for their up-to-the-minute news briefings, data from Brightcove’s Q1 2020 Global Video Index shows, with video views up 47%.
As news became more critical and the world’s attention turned to al-things coronavirus, consumers increasingly saw streaming news as their best bet for breaking information about the world, their country and even their hometown.
Globally, and in most regions, March saw the highest engagement with viewers and the last two weeks of March saw more views and time spent with news than the first two weeks.
Among the news highlights:

In the US, time spent watching news video increased 319%

42% of all news video view for the quarter occurred in March

Australia/New Zealand saw Y/Y news video views increase+57%

Europe saw Y/Y views of news increased by 47%; views in March made up 41% of the quarter’s views

News views in the Middle East/North Africa region rose nearly 3X, with March making up 42% of the quarter’s views; time spent viewing news video nearly doubled.

Enterprise, retail video use soars
The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic was even more evident on enterprises and retailers.
Views of enterprise videos nearly doubled globally (+91%) as companies increased their efforts to stay connected with a remote workforce, customers and vendors.
March saw more than 41% of all views in the quarter, with the second half of the month accounting for 23% of the quarter’s total video views.
Retailers also turned to online video as the coronavirus impacted their willingness to put ads alongside the grim news of the pandemic. But consumers remained curious about retail, increasing consumption 135% globally as they increasingly moved online to shop.
Unlike media and entertainment, smartphones remained at the center of consumer’s video world when it came to retail, with video views up 253% Y/Y on smartphones and 143% Q/Q. Views more than doubled in the United States and were up 188% in Europe.
Brightcove’s Global Video Index assesses more than 400 billion anonymized data points from Brightcove’s thousands of customers each quarter, drawing industry insights that can help guide strategic and tactical decisions for businesses of all sizes.
The bottom line
The coronavirus pandemic saw streaming increase across the globe. It legitimately can be seen as an event that will change the course of how Internet-delivered video is used and accelerate its adoption around the globe and across virtually all demographics.
In terms of news, it’s far more flexible in terms of delivery than broadcast, able to spin up additional news “channels” quickly. That gives publishers and content owners more bandwidth to deliver in-depth reports on either a macro- or micro-basis, including live events as they happen.
Aside from COVID-19, with recent events, we’ll see an even more significant surge in viewing consumption for Q2.
It wasn’t just news, obviously, that has seen greater adoption of video; entertainment moved front and center (as evidenced by Netflix’s 15.8 million new subscribers in Q1) during the quarter, as well.
Simply put, consumer’s accelerated adoption of OTT in Q1 (and we’ll see more in Q2) is an example of how we adapt to change. It’s evolution in action.
Content owners and distributors need to understand that this isn’t a blip in data, it’s evolution… and we won’t be going back to the way it was.
Stay tuned – and stay well.

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Performers want to perform; audiences want to watch. It’s that simple. And nothing should come between this time-honored relationship that’s existed since the first cavemen gathered around their buddy singing dinosaur songs. As concerts and performances rapidly evolve, Brightcove makes sure you don’t get left behind with video experiences that meet all the demands of today’s digital world. From staying connected to donors to building new audiences, the potential of video is unlimited, and Brightcove is ready to put you at center stage.
THIS HAS BECOME ONE LONG INTERMISSION
With the global pandemic shutting down most in-person performances, arts organizations realize they can’t stay silent for long. This is especially crucial when it comes to donors and patrons, the lifeline of any organization. By developing live stream performances and video content on-demand, your organization stays connected to these supporters and demonstrates that you’re committed to engaging with them. Brightcove’s video technology and solutions are helping The Tribeca Film Festival, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Opera, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and more to remain vibrant, innovative, and top-of-mind with their loyal benefactors.
REVENGE OF THE BALCONY DWELLERS
For those audience members who’ve always been squinting from the balcony, a video performance now brings the stage up-close and personal. Brightcove’s flawless live streams deliver every note and nuance in absolute clarity, creating a virtual performance that, in some ways, will rival an in-person performance. What’s more, arts organizations are using the power of video to give audiences an even stronger appreciation for what they’re about to see.
This might be an interview with the composer, an informative lecture about an opera, or a day in the life of a ballet dancer before she soars onto the stage.
THE CONCERT HALL JUST GOT WAY, WAY BIGGER.
As video lets you connect with your current audiences, it also opens up a whole new world–literally. With Brightcove’s powerful technology, your sonata, pirouette, or soliloquy can be seen on phones, tablets, TV, and any other screen across the globe. Think of the new audiences you will reach. Maybe a couple who could never find a babysitter will now pay to sit at home and enjoy the performance. Or, maybe someone who could never afford the expensive night out will now find this much more accessible. People want to be entertained, and they’re already living a digital life, so meet that willing audience with outstanding video solutions from Brightcove and rest assured that you will look and sound your absolute best.
The future of musical and theatre performance is clearly transforming, and Brightcove will make sure you stay on top of it all. Let our recognized video technology and solutions fuel your imagination as you keep your organization thriving and relevant in today’s changing world.
Watch our latest webinar, Keeping The Main Stage Alive With Video, to discover the latest trends impacting the performing arts industry and learn how some top organizations are implementing digital strategies and using streaming video to survive and grow their audience-base.

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You might’ve heard that Apple is making changes to its user tracking policies that will impact the use of device identifiers in iOS 14. Now, if you’re not using tracking for advertising, these new policies won’t affect you. And since the data that Brightcove analytics collects is anonymous and isn’t shared between publishers, it’s not subject to Apple’s new policies.
But let’s take a look at what’s changing and what you need to know as an app publisher.
What is IDFA?
IDFA is Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers, a unique ID string that identifies a particular device. It’s used in a few different ways, but the most common one is to support personalized advertising. Say I’ve opened the app for my favorite local restaurant chain, but I didn’t actually buy anything. Then I open the app for my local news publisher and start watching a video. When the app goes to fetch a preroll ad, it passes along my device’s IDFA, and the restaurant chain might choose to pay a little extra to run an ad about their latest meal deal. Everybody wins — the advertiser reaches someone who’s more likely to make a purchase, the publisher gets paid more for the preroll, and I see an ad that’s actually relevant to me.
But that same mechanism can get a bit creepy. The industry is trending away from sharing this sort of data without more transparency, and the latest move from Apple is a way to push for more privacy by default.
What’s changing?
With iOS 14, if an app doesn’t get explicit permission to provide the IDFA of the device it’s on, then it won’t get something unique. (This new policy will go into effect in early 2021.) This won’t make things fail, but it’ll prevent the advertiser from seeing that an ad request comes from a device they want to sell to, so the value chain is broken.
Apple is making a key change to support this, with a new API to request permission for the IDFA. This only needs to be requested once for each app, and a user can change whether they opt in or out any time in Settings (similar to how permission for location tracking is handled now). As an app publisher, you should explain to your users why you’re asking for this information – the value of personalizing ads. Just throwing up the system dialogue when a user first opens the app is a sure way to get a lot of opt outs. (Especially if you’re also asking for location permissions at the same time!)
For customers using the Brightcove Native iOS SDK, we’ve added support for the OS-level opt-in/out API, along with the latest Google IMA SDK (v3.12.1). Without integration with this API, any requests for the IDFA on iOS 14 – regardless of user preference – will have a value of 0, just as if the user had opted out. This update ensures that developers have access to the IDFA whenever possible. You’ll find this in our September release of iOS SDK v6.7.12, with full iOS 14 compatibility.
What else is there?
IDFA was designed for personalized advertising, but it has also been used in a couple of other ways that Apple is offering alternatives for.
If an app publisher has a network of apps but doesn’t identify users themselves (e.g., via a login), they can access an IDFV (Identifier for Vendors), which is structured like an IDFA but is only unique across that publisher’s apps. So it can’t be used to share an ID between a news publisher and the restaurant, but it does allow a publisher to track a user’s viewing habits across different apps in their own network. (This doesn’t require a user to opt in.)
Another common use case is attributing app installations – IDFAs are used to identify referrals between apps that might be bounced through the App Store. Apple has provided a new StoreKit API (SKAdNetwork) to support this particular use case that also doesn’t require end user opt in.
Should publishers be worried?
No one really knows. Apple has provided users with a way to opt out of the IDFA since iOS 7 way back in 2013, but it’s buried in Settings so it never caught on.
At the other extreme, as Safari has made it harder and harder to work with 3rd-party cookies, publishers have found that advertiser demand (and therefore revenue) has dropped. The IDFA change doesn’t go as far, so if you’re thinking about deploying a native app, you can still monetise it more effectively than you can mobile web on iOS.
It’s likely this will land somewhere in the middle. Encouraging users to opt in and explaining the value of getting relevant ads will certainly help. And separately, publishers should be looking at other ways to trade on their own first- or second-party data to maximise the value of their inventory.

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