goalgetter.TV creates soccer moments for eternity

BY CHRISTIAN STEIAUF

(Published in The Produktkulturmagazin issue 2 2015)

For FC Basel, the Swiss Football League came to a masterful end. In the German Bundesliga though, the last day of matches held rather dramatic turns for fans, players and clubs alike, especially those from the south of the republic. Stuttgart remains excellent, Freiburg relegates. We saw pure emotions and literally moving images.

Not only on the classic news channels could we could watch the relegation battle. Nowadays, reports can be found on countless online portals (social networks bundle and focus the messages from different transmitters) and via Live Scores, flash messages and photo galleries, mood images reach us in real time: posts, tweets, likes and shares as well as comments from fans and followers. Finally, insights are provided by many professional footballers themselves on their own Twitter or Facebook pages - directly from the players’ dressing room or from the team bus or training ground.

With goalgetter.TV, a new WebTV format including video portal and app has been launched and is about to establish a private social network for the international soccer community consisting of players, coaches, clubs and of course, the fans.

The twins Philipp and David Degen are at home are not only at home in professional sports. In their time as professional soccer players at FC Basel, both have experienced the developments in active fan work (“customer loyalty”) first hand and have promoted it themselves, either as social network users (“recipients”) or as active contributors (“senders”), for example during the championship celebration of FC Basel on the town hall’s balcony for example. The video - in this case “user-generated content” by professional soccer player Philipp Degen, who had captured impressions from the ceremonial reception with the goalgetter.tv app - can be found in the new football community online as well as on the Facebook fansite.

The technical basis of the new video community for soccer players and fans is provided by the publishing platform mediacockpit by Bertsch Innovation, mainly for video, category and user management. The platform is based on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, for dynamic scalability of the platform, as well as on the integrated interface to Azure Media Services for the provision of optimised video formats. The “Social Video Network” is complemented by the iPhone app from goalgetter.TV, which is available free of charge from the iTunes store. Like the web portal, it provides users with entry points through different categories and filters (News, Featured, World, Categories) and presents the latest posts from all arenas in the world when started.

The video platform allows the registered visitor - who, in addition to own video uploads via the app can also manage his community and followers - the most important interactions: “social sharing” on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ or commenting on individual clips and creating favourites and friends lists. The user thus builds his individual feed within the app and can conveniently control his personal choice of selected sports moments (locations, stadiums, match days, clubs) to be displayed. The short movies are created and cut directly in the goalgetter.TV app. It allows the user to choose between three different starting points for their video project: Quick Shot, Custom, or FullShot, which all include different presets. The latter option is for the experienced amateur director, who is guided by a storyboard to implement their film project. After selecting a category, the clips can be filmed individually with simple steps (intro up to 15 secs, setting clips 3 secs each, location 10 secs), optionally, voiceover or background music is added before publishing the video directly on the web portal.

The strategic marketing has thus found its way into professional sports (“CRM for fans”), while networking and interaction in social media channels have gained tremendous momentum in the past three years. Exclusive insights into the dressing room during the championship celebration and impressions from the stands in the arena or the training - “all this added value content transfers exciting moments directly to the fan’s smartphone, inviting him to comment, like and share,” says CTO Sebastian Pfeiffer. In return, the (sports) brand is charged positively and emotionally.

What has come into the strategic focus of professional sports clubs now, has long been known in industrial companies, or has at least been initiated in an exciting and informative manner in parts of the product and brand communication for many industries. The significance of media-oriented, informative, professionally as well as supposedly authentic short films not only influences the buying decision of customers but also assists companies in knowledge transfer (visual manuals in the field of service and maintenance of complex machines, FAQ tutorials, software training etc .)

A look at the numbers (Source: FIFA, Stastista) provides goalgetter AG with strong evidence that there is a huge prospective audience and proves the enormous potential of “participatory content” in soccer: In Germany alone, there are 16 million clubs and recreational players and about 32 million registered football fans (worldwide 265 million players and about 1.6 billion fans). The total market volume for advertising in the sector (TV broadcasting rights) is estimated at 500 million euros - with media budgets allocated to moving image formats in online marketing constantly increasing. The Goalgetter.TV app business model expects strong growth in user numbers in the first few months, and projects approximately one million page views a day after the first six months. This corresponds to a media value of 120,000 dollars. Discussions with brand manufacturers, marketers and ad networks are underway, the young company says.

The possibilities of capitalising one’s own media content that are thus enabled quickly become apparent: sponsorship contracts are increasingly based on user numbers, page views, time spent, sales of merchandising products, click-through rates on sponsored listings, completion rate for online ticketing and similar figures.

The provision of appealing content with added value (especially video) leads to a high rate of interaction with both fans and customers and to increased identification with the sender. This in turn leads to higher sales - if the customers’ (fans) and partners’ (sponsors) expectations are continuously met. goalgetter.TV stands for building fans and brands by charging them with emotion and turns players and fans alike into producers of their own personal soccer moments. It creates a video library that is clearly targeted and has a high reach. It also offers new business models and placements for sponsors.

These rapid developments demand and promote innovative solutions in the ‘mobile video’ and ‘user-generated content’ sectors, like the ones Goalgetter AG has initiated with the launch of its new video portal, which they will be following with anticipation and further developing in the coming months: the platform pursues the idea of a global community and will shortly become available for fans that speak Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Japanese.

“From professionals for fans and vice versa: shoot, save and share video - it is easy, it’s like seeing it live and is just a lot of fun.” says David Degen, CEO of Goalgetter AG and former midfielder of FC Basel.

The successful media-cockpit product line has supported advertising companies in Enterprise DAM / PIM as well as automated publishing for print, web and mobile for 15 years.

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For 15 years, the successful product line mediacockpit has supported advertising companies in enterprise DAM/PIM as well as in automated publication for print, web and mobile.

Bertsch Innovation GmbH
Christian Steiauf
info@bertschinnovation.com 
bertschinnovation.com

CUSTOMER

Goalgetter AG
info@goalgetter.tv 
goalgetter.tv 

Picture credits © istock.com/Aksonov