CYNOPSISSPORTS
06.23.14 Good morning. It’s Monday, June 23, 2014, and this is your first early morning Sports briefing.
As the World Cup looks toward the next round of play, viewers continue to flock to on multiple screens to absorb the tournament. Univision Digital has had an especially good run, as the Univision Deportes App ranked as the top free sports app in the Google Play Store for the fourth day in a row heading into the weekend. The first eight days of that tournament (spanning June 12-19) scored as the top eight most visited days in Univision Digital history, according to Adobe Analytics, while the Brazil/Mexico matchup broke two records on June 17 to rank as Univision’s most-watched live stream ever, and surpassed Univision Digital’s record for highest concurrent live streams for a single event.
The app comes as part of a partnership between Univision and Neulion to upgrade the digital multi-screen experience. Through the partnership, NeuLion delivers authenticated live content for Univision Deportes with interactive features including real-time live highlights, stats, schedules, news, rosters and more for the TV Everywhere experience. Cynopsis Sports spoke with Scott Levine, Senior Vice President, Products at Univision and Chris Wagner, EVP and co-founder at NeuLion, about the digital strategy, the record traffic and how the World Cup will be leveraged for the future.
Levine on approaching the World Cup: In 2013, we started building ourselves up for live streaming of the World Cup. We had already seen huge usage of people that were coming and consuming other games, especially on mobile devices. Over the course of the year, we came to the conclusion that we wanted to do something on an epic scale. We needed an industry-leading partner that could help us get to that level. Toward the end of the year, we worked with Neulion to implement all of Univision Deportes’ live streaming around the core elements of the Neulion platform. That led to the digital launch of what you see today as Univision Deportes, which is an online experience, a web experience, an app experience, taking the best of what we provide which is great content expertise, great visuals, etc. and combines it with the expertise of Neulion to create a one-stop shop for soccer fans.
Wagner on clips: One of the things we haven’t done with any of the other leagues or brands that we work with is the way these clips get published during the live match, not just during the broadcast, but also multi-camera angle clips and how those clips can be watched and immediately pushed out on someone’s favorite social network. It is literally touch it with your finger, see the icon and Tweet it and having that happen as the match progresses along with the live stat is a very cool experience. I think a lot of other big sports brands are looking at it and saying ‘Wow.’
Levine on World Cup numbers: We are seeing fantastic usage here from the users’ perspective. There is a great story that has been told every single day of huge usage on both the TV network as well as on the digital products. The Mexico/Brazil game was one of our most-streamed games ever, probably coming in around 3.6-3.7 million streams. We are seeing huge growth in concurrents, the other day we had around 620,000 concurrent people on watching the experience at the same time. That shows a complete interest that our fans, as well as all soccer fans, have for this and not just in Spanish. It’s a bilingual audience and we are seeing huge pops in engagement for games that aren’t just Mexico and Brazil. About 24-25% of the people coming into the app are choosing to use the app in English.
Wagner on challenges: We are very satisfied but we still have a lot of work to do. Neulion did 47,000 live sports events last year. It is a space we know very well. All the synchronization of live content, stats, multiple cameras, scores, primary video, these are all things that we built our business around. We need to make sure this was all intuitive for the consumer so that it was all easy to find and everything was synched up the right way. It was a great amount of fun to do it around the World Cup.
Levine on the future: How do we build for the future? The first 56 games are not authenticated but the remaining games will be. We want to use this time to work with the audience and help them get authenticated because that is good for everybody at the end of the day. After that, we start working on other different types of content we can bring into the experience. How do we push forward on that and grow the engagement inside the app? For one, imagine what we can do clipping all of these games and building a library around that. Football fans could use that as the one place to go. There are a lot of things that we are going to start looking at around that to grow with the audience. We will also be bringing in 24/7 networks into the app, so that you will be able to watch things like UDN inside the app.
The NHL laid out it 2014-15 regular season plans, with games beginning Wednesday, Oct. 8 with a four-pack of contests. Opening the season will be Montreal/Toronto at 7p, Philadelphia/Boston at 7:30p, Vancouver/Calgary at 10p and San Jose/LA at 10p, where the kings will raise their second championship banner. Overall, the season will see 1,230 regular-season games and wrap up on Saturday, April 11, with all 30 clubs in action. Other highlights will see the Blackhawks/Caps in the 2015 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic on Thursday, Jan. 1 at 1p and a break from Jan. 22-26 for the 2015 All-Star Weekend.
Back to the World Cup, through 23 matches, the ESPN television networks are averaging a 2.3 household rating and 3,722,000 viewers, according to Nielsen, to maintain its upward trend with spikes of 21% and 26% over the first 23 matches in 2010. Overall, ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC have combined to reach more than 65,000,000 people through the first 17 matches, marking a 16% rise over 2010. To date, the top-10 markets on the ESPN Networks are: Washington, D.C., (4.6), San Francisco (3.9), New York (3.9), Hartford/New Haven (3.5), Los Angeles (3.5), Orlando (3.4), Miami/Ft. Lauderdale (3.3), Atlanta (3.3), Boston (3.3) and Richmond (3.2).
Worldwide, the 2014 FIFA World Cup has also shattered multiple viewing records during the first round of group matches in Brazil, with highs in Brazil, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Argentina, France, the Netherlands, Croatia and Italy. “These record-breaking figures show just how popular football and the FIFA World Cup is across the world, from Japan to Argentina,” said Niclas Ericson, Director of FIFA TV. “We are seeing highly encouraging growth in interest in markets such as the United States and Australia.”
ESPN finally deputed its new SportsCenter home Sunday night, with the series broadcasting from the 194,000-square foot Digital Center 2. Craig Bengtson, Vice President, Director of News for ESPN told reporters that the space was needed as the franchise as grown and will offer a new experience for audiences. “What’s great about the studio is we finally have a studio that was built to support a 24/7 show. We’re currently working off a studio that was built at a time when we were live only three hours a day, and now we’re live 18plus hours a day.” He added, “The programs will be differentiated in different ways by where they stand on the set, because the set has many multiple anchor locations. The lighting in the morning is different than the lighting at night. The music in the morning is slightly different than the music at night. There are more than 100 video and graphic display monitors versus 15 on the current set. They’re big, they’re large, they’re going to be able to deliver information in a better way to the audience, and I think that will make more compelling television.”
Following NCAA President Mark Emmert’s comments equating paying college athletes to minor league sports, and noting that “minor league sports aren’t very successful,” according to multiple outlets, executives are pushing back against the characterization. "Converting college sports into professional sports is an excellent subject for debate with good points on both sides of the issue,” said Joe Newman, ABA CEO. “However, to say that ‘And we know that in the U.S. minor league sports aren’t very successful for fan support or for the fan experience’ is arrogance and ignorance personified. It is insulting to every minor league in the US – baseball, football, basketball and hockey leagues and teams. Perhaps Mr. Emmert should leave his penthouse office, walk across the street and watch the Indianapolis Indians or the Indianapolis Ice play a game. Of if he will attend an Indy Naptown All Star game this season (we’ll give him a free ticket), maybe he’ll gain a better understanding of the value of minor league sports."
Cynopsis is introducing a new web feature called "In Case You Missed It," which is a quick, concise, roundup of the top stories of the previous week: Check it out every Monday at InCaseYouMissedIt.
Compelling Drama & TV Records
On the field, the world watched another weekend of unexpected match outcomes, significant injuries and jaw-dropping goals. Costa Rica defeated Italy to move on to the knockout round, France scored nearly half a dozen goals on Switzerland and Germany’s Miroslav Klose tied Ronaldo’s record of lifetime World Cup goals. All of which and more captivated the worldwide audience to the tune of record numbers.
Brand commercials are also seeing their spots viewed time and again by fans. Over 1.2 billion minutes of World Cup commercials have been watched thus far according to YouTube.
Pura Vida!
On Friday, the world watched as Costa Rica moved into the knockout round with a win over Italy. Interestingly, the larger, previously most active brands stayed quiet, while smaller brands capitalized on their silence. Cerveza Aguila tweeted their new follower count; an impressive 2.6k follower increase in only one week. Elsewhere, in an attempt to relate their product back to the sport, El Jimador continued posting recipes including their products for the winning teams – this time responding to Costa Rica’s win by creating a team specific cocktail.
Colorful Real-Time Marketing
A very impressive take on real-time marketing came late Friday between two brands, rarely, if ever, linked.
Hours prior to the Switzerland vs. France match, @DunkinDonuts, a brand with no connection to any national teams or World Cup initiatives, tweeted their new koozie colors. On the surface it would have seemed innocent, but the photo bared a shocking resemblance to Switzerland’s blue and pink Puma kit. During the game @Puma responded “@dunkindonuts, we like your style. Wonder where you got the inspiration” showing Dunkin Donuts iced coffee cups inside Puma’s blue and pink cleats. @Puma followed up the next day with another colorful tweet as Ghana tied Germany, dropping the f-bomb to start the tweet.
Be on the lookout for more fireworks from the brand, as Italy takes on Uruguay Tuesday afternoon. @Puma has already begun its marketing for the match, Tweeting a call-to-action for fans to participate in a tweet-off, “We won’t pick sides. But you can. It’s the Unbelievable Fans Tweet-Off. #ITAvs.#URU Sign up:http://go.puma.com/tweetoff” with the call-to-action for fans to pick by choosing Italy or Uruguay’s hashflags. On Tuesday (match day) all tweets will be released to show support for the teams – with CSE’s Social World Cup analysis of the campaign to follow Wednesday.
Tying Milestones
While the match resulted in a tie, Germany vs. Ghana gave brands an opportunity to capitalize on multiple record setting plays. As Germany’s Klose tied the all-time World Cup goal scoring record with former Brazil star Ronaldo, @NikeFootball leveraged the milestone with their tried and true #riskeverything campaign with minimal engagement.
However, when Ronaldo got into the act with the following tweet, “Welcome to the club #Klose” he sent in 3 different languages and it received 70,000+ engagements. @Puma’s content strategy was to take advantage of Ghana’s underdog story during the match, resulting in average engagement (based on other tweets sent during the tournament.) However, when Asamoah Gyan tied the record as top African scorer, @Puma responded with this, “They say shocker. We say history. @ASAMOAH_GYAN3 ties Roger Milla’s record as the top African scorer. #StartBelieving”. That tweet registered one of Puma/Puma Football’s top 5 engagements of the World Cup.
USA-Portugal Social Preview
As Sunday night approached, twitter conversation began focusing on the most anticipated match of the weekend: USA vs. Portugal. The World Cup ball has its own handle, @brazuca who tweeted about Jozy Altidore missing the match,“Nice of @JozyAltidore to wish me luck ahead of the #USA vs. #POR game. I’ll miss you big guy #getwellsoon”.
Even after its sponsored players were “banned” from wearing their products during the World Cup @beatsbydre continued their #KnuckleUp campaign in support of the USA, using USA Women’s player Sydney Leroux as an integral part of the campaign. Over 10,000 fans reportedly tweeted their image with the letters ‘USA’ written across three knuckles.
A brand not heavily active on Twitter, Google, has been engaging in World Cup conversation by creating a trend and search analyzing URL. The site analyzes Google+ activity in order to show what the national sentiment is from each country’s fans towards an upcoming match. Users can access the feed herehttp://www.google.com/trends/worldcup#/en-us or simply Google “world cup trends”.
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Amid speculation about the Joe Gibbs Racing team in NASCAR next season, JGR President J.D. Gibbs told FOX Sports that M&M’s will remain with driver Kyle Busch, no matter what other drivers may or may not join the team. Gibbs was responding to reports that Carl Edwards would move from Roush Fenway Racing to become a fourth Gibbs driver next season, and that M&M’s would shift its marketing to Edwards while Monster would upgrade from Nationwide to sponsor Busch.
Speaking of NASCAR, the sport is celebrating the fifth anniversary of NASCAR Troops to the Track, a year-round recreational group therapy program that honors service men and women, veterans and military families at races throughout the country, announcing that Bank of America signed on as the presenting sponsor of the initiative.
FIFA World Cup sponsor Visa is taking advantage of Robin van Persie’s goal off of a diving header against Spain last week, which saw #persieing go viral. The brand reimagined the score via the Visa Teletransporter, recreating the famed header shot. Visa will look to create other buzzed about scenes throughout the tournament, as events unfold.
Some nuggets from the #WorldCup. Twitter reports that there were 3.9 million Tweets sent during the Germany/Ghana match on Saturday, 5.4 million Tweets sent for Argentina/Iran, 3.2 million sent during Costa Rica/Italy and 2.9 million for Switzerland/France.
On Facebook, interaction during the first week of World Cup saw more people have conversations about the event than the number of people who talked about this year’s Super Bowl, Oscars and Sochi Games combined.
Netherlands/Chile on ESPN/Univision at noon.
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Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: The Venus Rosewater Dish is presented to the winner of what event? Answer: The Ladies Singles Champion at Wimbledon. Kudos: Steven Roach-NBC Sports Group/NY; J. Barry McMullin-Premier Partnerships/NY; Andrew Feingold-Nielsen Sports/NY; Tim Overmyer-20th TV/Atlanta; Mike Antolini-Tiger Woods Foundation/Washington, D.C.; Ken Nice-Yoh/Silver Spring; Gretchen Brady-KDAF/Dallas; Will Allmendinger-Zoom Media/Chicago; Peter Steckelman-The Tennis Channel/Santa Monica.
Later — Chris
Chris Pursell for Cynopsis | Sports @VegasandVine
06.23.14
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