England Table Tennis Success – Live Coverage by 1080 Media TV

International Table Tennis, At Fenton Manor SportsCentre Stoke on Trent 1st Nov 2016 Pic Steve Parkin England's Paul Drinkhall in action with
International Table Tennis, At Fenton Manor SportsCentre Stoke. England’s Paul Drinkhall in action

1080 Media TV were appointed to provide multi-camera coverage and live stream England’s European Qualifying table tennis match against Greece on 1st November 2016. This attracted a record 2.2 million unique viewers to the live broadcast on TheSPORTbible Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/SPORTbible/videos/2111350545677133/

Breaking new ground for both rightsholder and broadcaster, the full fixture was broadcast exclusively digitally, achieving viewing figures which surpass many major televised football fixtures.

The audience figures establish clearly for the first time the market for stream-only sports events, reaching an audience demographic of millennials which mainstream broadcasters have found increasingly difficult to engage with.

The stream-only broadcast marks a first both for sports governing bodies in England and digital publisher TheSPORTbible (whose reach of 100m a week makes it more popular than both the Daily Mail and the Guardian websites).

Mark Taffler, Head of Commercial at Table Tennis England, believes that the broadcast could pave the way to a whole new market for sports rights. He said: “We’ve proved that there is a market for this kind of broadcast – and that it’s a big market. By broadcasting through TheSPORTbible we’ve bypassed the traditional sports rights market and gone to where the audience is. As a strategy, it’s proved incredibly effective. The same night as Man City were playing Barcelona in the Champions League, there were 2.2m people watching table tennis. There is an appetite from people to watch our sport and, through a platform like The SPORTbible, we are finding them.”

After this – we 1080 Media TV were then commissioned for a Women’s International in Gillingham on November 22nd and this was another huge success with England also winning this match 3-2, and with another sizeable audience watching our live stream on Team GB’s FaceBook page.

Exciting times and hugely enjoyable to be involved.