YouTube Icon

Beyond Cricket: Sports Flashes Wants To Be A One-Stop Online Platform For ‘Everything About Sports’




Beyond Cricket: Sports Flashes Wants To Be A One-Stop Online Platform For ‘Everything About Sports’

On Sunday, football enthusiasts had been glued to their TV units to cheer on group India as they lifted the trophy inside the Intercontinental Cup 2018 Finals, telecast on Star Sports. Those who prefer to do their viewing on line grew to become to Hotstar. Similarly, for stay streaming of cricket matches, there’s Cricbuzz, ESPNcricinfo, Yahoo! Cricket, and Hotstar, and for news and updates, there’s Sportskeeda. But these are India’s maximum cherished video games, and there’re a host of websites, TV channels, and apps targeted on them.

There isn't any unmarried on line platform wherein you may circulate cricket suits, watch tennis or boxing, get football updates, and catch up on news from across the sports world. Realising this gap, Raman Raheja, a pro entrepreneur with experience in both stay amusement and sports franchising, decided to construct a one-stop online sports activities platform that might cater to all of the popular sports played in India. The end result: Sports Flashes.

In Raman’s words, the organisation targets to emerge as an online ESPN for the Indian sports network. “Everything that you can think of sports activities can be to be had on Sports Flashes. This is what we are building,” says Raman Raheja, founder, Sports Flashes.

Online sports video content aggregator Sports Flashes streams stay films, presents live rankings and updates in addition to the today's information thru a internet site and a cell app. The platform lately added an internet radio channel to its different properties — Live TV, Live Score and News — becoming the primary startup in India to do so.

The startup is backed by using India’s largest media conglomerate, the Times Group, which has also invested in Cricbuzz. Recently, Sports Flashes raised $1 Mn in a Pre-Series A investment spherical from the US-primarily based early-stage project capital company SRI Capital. With the investment, the startup goals take impactful and strategic projects to increase its commercial enterprise.

Sports Flashes: Upping The Online Sports Content Game

Raheja, who has previously treated tasks for the Commonwealth Games, the World Kabaddi League, the IIFA Awards, and the IPL, amongst others, also ran an occasion control company of his personal. He determined his entrepreneurial aim after he kicked off Sports Flashes in August 2016.

Unlike most other web sites and apps, that are restricted to cricket, football, or a handful of other sports, Sports Flashes aggregates content material throughout 34 sports activities and video games genres and events — football, kabaddi, hockey, archery, capturing, wrestling, taekwondo, volleyball, basketball, or even yoga — each in India and overseas, bringing it to customers a single platform.

Sports Flashes streams stay sports activities activities, airs interviews, live commentaries, and fanbase commentaries on Live TV, provides actual-time occasion updates and rankings on Live Score, and also has a phase for news. The live suits are later available as recordings.

Although the primary medium is English, it also curates regional news content material in a couple of Indian languages, together with Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, and Hindi. It plans to add Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada to its language repertoire soon.

Also Read:- 7 Digital Marketing Trends for 2020 You Should Know

Sports Flashes: Show Me The Money

The startup has built a B2B module round sports activities and categorized its revenue monetisation specifically into four classes — content indication, content material introduction, content material broadcast, and classified ads. It has plans to extend into paid subscriptions later. Here’s how Sports Flashes is walking its enterprise:

Content Indication: It is an established version which has large players together with Yahoo! And Google consuming contents from India on sports. Raheja says being a platform that offers content in seven Indian languages, the startup has a bonus over different existing sports activities platforms which in particular cater to English and Hindi audiences.

Content Creation: Franchises, membership proprietors, and occasion organisers organise a number of sports activities in kabaddi, hockey, soccer, billiards, snooker, weightlifting, and so on all round the 12 months in India. Sports Flashes has a bunch of professionals who create content material that isn't without difficulty to be had — interviews, function articles, information tales, audio-video bytes and so forth, in a couple of languages — and can be monetised.

Content Broadcast: The startup plans to help smaller sports activities events at a nearby stage get a much wider target audience. “Regional activities don’t typically get the possibility to be highlighted on the principal TV channels, so we broadcast such occasions on our platform,” says Raheja.

Subscription: The startup is in the manner to garner more top class content material. “Once we've got sufficient top class content, in a year or so, we can introduce paid subscriptions,” says Raheja, citing Hotstar’s example, which became a loose platform in advance. “Slowly, they determined to push their content material towards paid subscriptions. That’s what we will ultimately do as well,” he provides.

What About Competition?

As a traditional medium, tv keeps to dominate foremost sporting moments. An over 1.5 Bn global target audience tuned in to TV broadcasts of the Commonwealth Games 2018. According to the Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC), Sony Pictures Network (SPN)’s insurance of the 22-day FIFA U-17 World Cup turned into considered by using over forty seven Mn humans throughout India. Similarly, IPL 11 noticed up to 378.6 Mn TV viewers.

Apart from web sites of principal sports channels like ESPN, Star Sports, and so on, and on-line-simplest sports activities platforms like Cricbuzz and Sportskeeda, there are on line sports platforms in India that cater to specific sports categories. For example, Khel Now is a cell-based totally social networking platform for sports, Athletto is a sports activities venues and fitness arenas finder, Football Solutions presents solutions on football, and others.

Television viewership may not alternate majorly, however time spent on-line is poised to increase to oftentimes than it's far these days. According to a recent report through Ficci-EY — Reimagining India’s M&E zone — India, via 2020, is anticipated to grow to be the second one largest on line video viewing target audience globally, fuelled by way of the exponential increase of video intake in virtual media.

There are presently around 1-1.5 Mn “digital-most effective purchasers” in India and that is poised to the touch over 4 Mn by using 2020, generating significant digital subscription revenues for the u . S . A .’s media and amusement zone. Startups which might be supplying virtual contents consist of POPxo, Arre, Yaap, Voot etc.

In any such crowded space, we requested Raheja how does Sports Flashes plan to carve out a area for itself. Also, how scalable is the enterprise version that he has created? “We aren't going ballistic in terms of pitching Sports Flashes because the ultimate sports platform. Our techniques are unique. Our advertising tasks are very localised to positive groups. It isn't always approximately going over-the-pinnacle (OTT),” says Raheja, about his advertising and marketing approach.

According to him, Sports Flashes has touched over 5 Mn viewership to this point, and the range attain for live sports activities is between 100k to 300k. The startup has an employee strength of fifty five in its Delhi workplace and about 50 stringers throughout the united states of america.

Beyond Cricket: Sports Flashes Wants To Be A One-Stop Online Platform For ‘Everything About Sports’

Sports Flashes team with Jitu Rai, an Indian shooter.

Keeping Up The Sporting Spirit

Sports Flashes has additionally received a few exceptional sports content material rights from each worldwide and home markets. “This consists of TV rights,” Raheja said. “Even Star Sports may additionally haven’t received some of these rights,” says Raheja.

Raheja continues that Sports Flashes is inside the manner of obtaining more rights for broadcasting international and national sports content. It has already bought rights from United World Wrestling to telecast wrestling fits stay and unique for Indian viewers. Then there are different non-extraordinary content, which don’t require rights, which can be available on the platform.

Sports Flashes is including price to the content material it streams with actual-time photograph representations, says Raheja. For instance, the photo below does a stay representation of on-discipline action — which team possesses the ball, who’s attacking, offside positions, who’s throwing, who’s making dreams, and so forth — with stay notifications.

Also Read:- TIPS FOR MAKING YOUR EMAIL MARKETING PERSONALISED

The startup has advanced an in-residence smart system which monitors users behaviour to offer applicable feeds and notifications by using monitoring the primary 10-30 minutes of the time spent via customers on the platform. “We don’t searching for any user statistics. Moreover, customers don’t need to add any data on the platform,” says Raheja, on the issue of information privateness.

The Game Ahead

Like most digital organizations trying to move tap into the following a hundred Mn Indians who are going online, Sports Flashes is also taking a hyperlocal technique to make its platform popular. In a chunk to deliver its visitors a big choice of sports activities across genres from a nearby degree, the startup has tied up with league organisers, sports federations, and franchises of various leagues.

“For example, if there's a kabaddi healthy taking place in Haryana, our manufacturing crew goes to the venue to offer stay coverage of the healthy on our platform,” he said.

For all those football fanatics who're waiting eagerly for the approaching FIFA World Cup 2018, Sports Flashes can be streaming ‘Special Shows’, bringing statement from soccer fanatics across the u . S ..

It also plans to circulate sports suits from neighbouring international locations like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, among others. “There are a few large statement to be made quickly,” Raheja signs and symptoms off, cryptically.

While Sports Flashes in its preliminary ranges and nonetheless hasn’t were given “the whole lot approximately sports activities” down pat, it has large plans, and as Raheja says, huge announcements ready. Let’s see what those huge bulletins are and if Sports Flashes manages to gain its goal of being a one-forestall on line sports content destination for Indian sports activities fans.



Author Biography.

Editorial Team
Editorial Team

Content Writer

Join Our Newsletter.

Subscribe to CrowdforThink newsletter to get daily update directly deliver into your inbox.

CrowdforGeeks is where lifelong learners come to learn the skills they need, to land the jobs they want, to build the lives they deserve.

CrowdforGeeks

CrowdforThink is a leading Indian media and information platform, known for its end-to-end coverage of the Indian startup ecosystem.

CrowdforThink

Our mission is "Har Koi Dekhe Video, Har Ghar Dekhe Video, Ghar Ghar Dekhe Video" so we Provide videos related to Tutorials, Travel, Technology, Wedding, Cooking, Dance, Festivals, Celebration.

Apna Video Wala
CFT

News & Blogs

aeb22a2d8e5da0572c6e4c0d53626f01.png

How Baby Amore Is Bringing Organic, Eco-Friendl...

Founded in 2019, Baby Amore was born out of the need to deliver top class baby care products with...

e46eae2e35fe61e876dcf9e46155b7e3.png

How Simpl’s BNPL Strategy Is Enabling Higher Co...

The buy-now-pay-later segment has been witnessing an extended increase as new gamers like Amazon,...

97bda2f9f8316af55918d303402bd8e5.png

How Meghalaya-Based D2C Startup Zizira Is Spici...

D2C emblem Zizira is bringing Meghalayan spices and herbs like Lakadong turmeric and valerian tea...

Top Authors

Lamia Rochdi is the Marketing Manager at Bell Flavors & Fragrances EMEA. A successful family-...

Lamia Rochdi

I’m Mertin Wilson a technician in a camera company and certified expert of different P...

Mertin Wilson

Zakariya has recently joined the PakWheels team as a Content Marketing Executive, shortly after g...

Zakariya Usman

Pankaj Singh is a Senior Digital Marketing Consultant with more than 2 years of experience in SEO...

Pankaj Singh
CFT

Our Client Says

WhatsApp Chat with Our Support Team