During the 2015/2016 season, I worked with Bradford City AFC on developing a live video strategy using Periscope to broadcast via Twitter. At the time in League One, Bradford City had the 6th largest social media fanbase when comparing to other teams in the league as well as a very active match-day online community.
Utilizing live video through social media was a logical step in engaging with the fan base further, as well as more personally interacting with fans around the world.
The Strategy
The strategy was to engage with fans at key points of the matchday schedule and utilize as many existing assets as possible, i.e. the matchday tannoy announcer who was also a radio presenter, players, and backroom staff.
We identified broadcastable content to be:
- players warming up
- teams leaving the tunnel and entering the pitch
- pregame interview with a club spokesperson
- post-game interview with a club spokesperson
- live question and answer forum with a player, manager, assistant manager, etc
- club events such as player of the year awards
- line-up announcements
We experimented with home games initially around some of the above events, before venturing into some away game engagements.
Player Of The Year Awards
The first real test of the strategy was initialized during the 2015/16 player of the year awards ceremony, a limited and ticketed event that typically got a high social interaction.
Prior to the awards taking place, we began build-up with Tweets recommending that users turn on notifications from the official Bradford City Twitter account so they didn’t miss the start of the broadcast.
The broadcast in numbers:
- 200+ Periscope account followers within the first 5 minutes (new account)
- 30+ hours of combined event viewing time
- 1000+ live viewers
- 6000+ “hearts”, making the account more popular than David Haye’s & House of Fraser’s after a single broadcast
- 72,000 impressions
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Photo Credit
Image taken by The 92 Groundsman via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0. Accurate as of 10/07/2019.