Case Study: Servecast and Liverpool Football Club - April 2006  

Liverpool Football Club is the most successful club in English soccer history, having won 18 league titles and been crowned champions’ of Europe on five occasions, including the dramatic victory of 2005. Liverpool Football Club is one of the few truly ‘international’ soccer clubs in the UK, with a potential fan base of millions spread around the globe. The Liverpool FC website alone achieves over 65m page impressions per month and has over 2.9m unique users per month. S&T examines the relationship between the club and its Streaming Media Partner Servecast.

LiverpoolFC.TV

LiverpoolFC.TV is a joint venture between Liverpool Football Club and broadcaster ITV plc. As the digital media arm of the Club, LiverpoolFC.TV operates the official club websites and mobile services, as well as producing television programming and other value-added services. Establishing a powerful international presence has always been a key aim of Liverpool FC and with this in mind the LiverpoolFC.TV service was launched to serve as an important brand building platform, playing a key role as Liverpool continues to promote to a global audience.
Liverpool FC needed to address actually who are the ‘fans’ and the football ‘customers’ in the global age. Club followers from the Far East know as much about Liverpool FC as some of the best informed and most loyal fans in the UK. They also, increasingly, make their financial contribution to English clubs and are clearly ‘fans’, even if they may never get near the Anfield stadium. With a massive global following, Liverpool FC recognised the internet as the single most important vehicle in communicating with its worldwide fan base. Liverpool FC needed to create alternative methods for fans around the world to access Liverpool FC football, many of whom who will never make it to the Anfield Stadium. Launching live and archive web coverage of matches is a service especially aimed at these overseas fans.
Another key objective of Liverpool FC is to achieve effective fan engagement. Extending the reach of LiverpoolFC.TV strongly supports this objective and effectively serves as a global brand platform on which the club can expand and grow is loyal brand following throughout the world. The E-season Ticket tagline ‘Bringing the Reds into Your Home via the Internet’ strongly communicates the brand value and the one-to-one relationship created between the fan and the Liverpool FC brand.

Servecast Solution

Servecast has been the exclusive Streaming Media Partner for Liverpool FC for the last five years. The deployment started with live match audio commentary and grew to include video archive, downloads and merchandising with streaming media as the centre-piece. The business model started as free-to-air in order to build a database of users. After 18 months, Liverpool switched to subscription and pay-per-view with an initial user base in third quarter 2001 of 1,500. Using Servecast’s comprehensive Sportscasting solution, Media Studio, Liverpool FC streams live and archive footage of Liverpool FC matches on www.liverpoolfc.tv. The Servecast streaming solution for Liverpool FC includes the following:

Live Broadcast

Servecast delivers highly resilient online broadcasts of live sporting events for Liverpool FC. This can include all production, satellite, editing and transmission services when required.

On-demand Broadcast

Servecast archives an unlimited amount of Liverpool FC content for the Liverpool FC audience to access over the web, at their own convenience, enabling increased exposure for Liverpool FC media assets and increased revenue opportunities for the club.

Management of Broadcasting Rights

The Servecast solution ensures Liverpool FC complies with the strict rules governing the broadcasting rights of sporting events while ensuring maximum legal exposure of content to its audience.
 
Statistics Reporting

Servecast’s proprietary content management platform, Media Studio, offers online information on file usage, providing highly customisable statistical analysis of audience viewing behaviour. This can be used for targeted promotions and advertising to specific customers or groups of customers. The accurate, realtime reporting also provides detailed online reports so that content owners can access information such as:
Number of unique visitors
Most popular files by request
Peak concurrent streams
Average length of streams
Total MB served
Total successful requests
Traffic by hour of day

Content Management

Servecast’s, Media Studio, provides Liverpool FC personnel with instant online access to manage the club’s content (self upload, instant media file encryption, self publishing, personal file organisation and instant access to media clips).

Content Protection

Servecast offers Liverpool FC a proprietary Digital Rights Management and content security solutions, for the protection of live and on-demand content.

Monetisation of Content

Servecast provides integrated services to enable pay-per-view, pay-per-download and subscription systems all supported by our dedicated in-house billing engine.

Multiple delivery channels to consumers

Servecast’s Media Studio also enables the delivery of content to fans through multiple delivery channels:
Web
E-mail
Instant Messenger
Mobile – MMS / Text / Download.
 
Media Services

Servecast provides a complete range of branded services for its customers. As well as providing all of the technical infrastructure hosting and content management for Liverpool’s broadband ‘e-Season’ subscription service, Servecast has been awarded a further three year contract to host Liverpool’s entire website and e-commerce facilities.
 
Ultimately, through LiverpoolFC.TV, the club has successfully exploited new internet and IP-enabled delivery channels for the further commercialisation of its media assets. The online accessibility of live and archive match coverage, highlights, player interviews and behind the scenes footage has resulted in new and profitable revenue streams for the club and has enabled it to tap into a worldwide fan base that would other wise be unreachable.
LiverpoolFC.TV is truly at the center of the Liverpool FC successful supporter communications programme and brand equity and is the driver behind increased revenues.

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