Perform has kicked off a major multiplatform drive for its direct-to-consumer football brand Goal.com.
The sports media specialist, which bought the football site last year, will stream two of Ireland’s FIFA World Cup 2014 Qualifier matches exclusively on the site in the UK and Australia, along with an international friendly.
The streams will be available on a pay-per-view basis, although Perform is also considering incorporating integrated advertising opportunities further down the line.
People can watch the matches via Goal.com’s Livesport.tv paltform, with each match priced at £2.99, or £5.99 for all three.
Perform’s MD of consumer brands and portals Ben Warn (pictured) said the exclusive streams will be the first of many future content deals for the site, as it looks to “put Goal.com on the map”.
Warn said there is a plethora of sports content that fall outside of what the major sports broadcasters can exploit, on which Perform can capitalise. “This is just the first of a number of deals to come, and there are so many opportunities to take the rights for content broadcasters don’t want to exploit,” he added.
It will also launch Goal.com on connected TVs including Samsing, LG and Toshiba later this year, according to Warn. Meanwhile tablets and smartphone devices are also a major area of focus, and it will look to roll out the brand to such devices in the coming year. “There are huge opportunities around second-screen content and advertising that we plan to push hard,” added Warn.
The acquisiton of Goal.com marked Perform’s ambitions to bolster its direct-to consumer business having previously centred its strategy largely on B2B activity and the syndication of its video-on-demand sports ePlayer to third-party publishers (nma.co.uk 23 February 2011).
Since then it has nearly doubled its traffic, taking the number of unique users from 19.4m unique users in January last year, to 30m globally, 3m of which are UK-based, according to Google Analytics.
Ensuring its content and device strategy for Goal.com is in synch with fast-changing consumer behaviours and ways of consuming media in multiple territories is a challenge, according to Warn. It will therefore monitor consumer preferences and demands as well as running extensive research projects, to help determine and shape its future content strategy, he said.
“We can monitor the users on the site, and also the activity and feedback we recieve on our social media channels, all of which provide decent insight. Along with our research project that will drive insight and help shape our strategy,” he added.
