Rakuten Viber helps fans keep tabs on Warriors
The messaging app Rakuten Viber isn’t well known in the United States, but Golden State Warriors center Zaza Pachulia relies on it to stay on top of events in his home country of Georgia.
On Monday, the Warriors will begin using Viber to keep basketball fans in Georgia, Russia and several other Eastern European and Mediterranean countries up to date with the basketball team.
That will include a free sticker pack — digital caricatures of Pachulia and teammates for fans to download and share like emoji — and automated communications channels in several languages.
Viber, which has more than 900 million registered users worldwide, is the team’s latest technology move to court new fans far beyond California’s borders.
The team has already used the microblogging service Sina Weibo to become China’s most popular NBA team. Now, it’s branching in other directions.
“The Warriors have fans all over the world, not just here in the Bay Area,” Pachulia said in an interview.
The Viber play is part of a threeyear, $60 million marketing deal the Warriors signed in September with Japanese technology giant Rakuten, which bought Viber in 2014 for $900 million. The Warriors now wear a Rakuten logo on their uniforms.
Viber, which was released in 2010, is
an all-in-one free messaging app, for mobile devices and PCs, that works over a Wi-Fi connection.
Although the Warriors are new to Viber, Pachulia has used it for several years because “it’s pretty popular” back in Georgia.
“With the time difference, the best way for me to communicate with friends and relatives is by text,” he said. But he also uses it for video calls and voice messages.
“It makes you feel connected and keeps you informed,” Pachulia said.
Starting Monday, the Warriors will offer an automated chatbot on Viber, with schedules, standings, news, videos, ticket information and live scores. The team started a similar chatbot, which runs automated conversations with individual fans, on Facebook Messenger during last year’s NBA playoffs.
The chatbot will be initially in English, but the Warriors and Viber plan to add Georgian, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Greek, Croatian, Serbian and Hebrew on Feb. 27.
The team is also offering a set of downloadable stickers, including caricatures of players, along with team logos and slogans like “Strength in Numbers.” Pechulia’s sticker depicts him wearing street clothes and sunglasses with the phrase, “Classy.”
The Warriors have a 10-member crew of employees who manage the team’s official Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Weibo accounts, said Jeremy Thum, the senior director of digital experience. The team also uses video, audio, an email newsletter, e-sports affiliations and several Web pages to connect with online fans wherever they are.
Individual players including Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant make personal use of Twitter, although with somewhat mixed results.
By adding Viber, the Warriors hope to capitalize on recent on-court success — with two NBA crowns in three years — to reach other parts of the world where basketball is popular, like the home countries of Pachulia and forward Omri Casspi of Israel.
Viber has only about a 10 percent market share in the U.S., far behind competitors like Facebook’s Messenger, said Rakuten Viber CEO Djamel Agaoua, who lives in San Francisco. But Viber is strong in Russia and former Eastern Bloc countries like Serbia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Hungary, he said.
According to industry research firm App Annie of San Francisco, Viber is the second-most-popular nongaming app in Russia, behind the Facebook-owned WhatsApp Messenger. Last year, Viber ranked among the top 10 apps in such countries as Greece, Ukraine, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
Soccer powerhouse FC Barcelona, which like the Warriors has a uniform advertising deal with Rakuten, quickly attracted more than 4.5 million followers when it started using Viber in September. The team also runs chatbot trivia games and fan votes for the top player of each game. One Moscow fan won a trip to see the team in Barcelona, Spain, and one of FC Barcelona’s sticker packs was downloaded more than 6 million times, Agaoua said.
In certain regions of the world, sticker packs that promote movies or events are very popular, especially with younger users, said Jenny Sussin, a research director at Gartner.
“People will pay money for sticker packs,” she said.
Viber still trails WhatsApp, which has more than 1 billion users. But Viber makes its technology easier for companies and organizations — like the Warriors and the NBA — to use for managing and supporting their marketing pushes, she said.
“This would be an effective means of reaching European fans,” Sussin said.
By adding Viber, the Warriors hope to reach other parts of the world where basketball is popular.