FIBA achieves digital milestones in 2016
IT WAS A BANNER year for the International Basketball Federation, or FIBA, in 2016 as far as the digital platform is concerned with the world basketball governing body making further in-roads in its social media presence.
In a release shared to BusinessWorld recently, FIBA said it was able to garner an impressive 18 million views from over 1,200 games it livestreamed from all over the world on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Seventy- eight percent of the total views were for youth competitions, which FIBA said only proved that its decision to offer livestreaming as a complement to TV beginning in 2013 was a “slam dunk.”
Of the youth competitions, the most viewed was a game between the United States and Turkey in the FIBA U17 World Championship with 459,575 views. The two teams faced in the finals of the tournament, which ran through June to July, where the Americans won.
Second most watched was United States versus Chinese Taipei, also in the same tournament with 366,982 views, and third was Lithuania against France in the FIBA U18 European Championship with 281,084 views.
Most watched FIBA events over the various social media platforms were the FIBA U17 Championship with 4.9 million views, FIBA U18 European Championship with 4.1 million, FIBA U20 European Championship with 1.6 million, FIBA U17 Women's World Championship 1.3 million and FIBA Americas U18 Championship 1.3 million.
FAN ENGAGEMENT
The world basketball governing body also had its fan engagement on its digital platforms boosted in 2016 by 116 event Web sites and 43 social media accounts in a total of 11 different languages, namely, English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Serbia, Italian, Czech, Turkish, Finnish, Hebrew and Romanian.
FIBA, too, was the most mentioned international sports federation in #Rio2016 tweets, according to social media analytics tool Scraawl.
It was also the second most followed international sports federation over Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, according to sports market data provider Sportcal. It was behind only to the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) on Facebook and Twitter, and World Rugby on Instagram.
FIFA also ranked third most followed among the International Olympic Organizations, data from Burson- Marsteller, a leading global public relations and communications firm, show.
Encouraged by the social media numbers it was able to pose, FIBA said it would continue to pursue its push on the digital platform, including livestreaming more games and events this year, in line with its thrust “to make basketball the most popular sport in the world.” —