Formula E gets mobile video boost with Grabyo VIP
May 21, 2015
By Colin Mann
Formula E, the new FIA single-seater championship that’s bringing high speed racing to the streets of major cities worldwide, is partnering with London start-up Grabyo to bring the ultimate digital experience to fans and accelerate the growth of its digital audience. As well as using Grabyo Studio to share real-time highlights from the live broadcast to Facebook and Twitter, for its next race in Berlin it will deploy Grabyo VIP to involve the teams and drivers in the production and distribution of native video.
The FIA Formula E Championship has, from its inception, set out to be the most digitally focused and accessible championship globally. This is exemplified by its use of FanBoost to create the first sports voting mechanism – which gives fans the opportunity to vote for their favourite driver to receive an extra speed boost during the race, while incentivising the drivers and teams to build their social fan bases in order to generate votes.
Having tested Grabyo’s real-time video sharing platform to bring fans timely content from the race on social media, Formula E is now partnering with the London start-up to share live highlights as well as use its newly launched Grabyo VIP mobile app to engage the drivers and teams in social video creation and distribution. By empowering all of the competitors to rapidly create, discover and share video in native formats (i.e., autoplay on Facebook and in-line video playback on Twitter), Grabyo VIP will allow Formula E to create an all-encompassing social ecosystem that leverages the large and highly engaged social audience of the drivers.
“Grabyo is at the forefront of real-time native video and it was clear to us that they had the same vision as we did,” noted Ali Russell, Chief Marketing Officer at Formula E. “With the ability of talent to drive much greater engagement than traditional rights holders on digital platforms, we knew we needed to involve the drivers and teams in media distribution. Grabyo VIP is much more than an app – it is a social video ecosystem that incorporates all our talent in content production and their social fanbases into our distribution network.”
“Formula E’s radical and progressive approach to digital is making waves in the sports industry so having them showcase Grabyo VIP is a real privilege,” said Gareth Capon, CEO at Grabyo. “Its use of FanBoost to integrate digital into the strategies of the racing teams is genius and we’re excited to see how their use of Grabyo VIP grows and evolves through the Championship.”
The newly launched Grabyo VIP mobile app powers multi-platform distribution of native video as well as the ability to share native video with integrated sponsorship and advertising assets. It is available to all verified users on Facebook and Twitter. Furthermore it supports rapid discovery and re-sharing of premium video content that has previously been distributed across the Grabyo platform by broadcast and rights holder partners. VIP users simply follow the partners’ accounts on Grabyo VIP to access the videos, which are surfaced in-feed within the app and updated in real time.