Press Release: December 19, 2011. Flumotion’s Online Video Platform powers Orange Arena, a new virtual meeting place where fans can enjoy basketball games and concerts for free.
Music and sports are as ancient as mankind itself. As vast and different they may be, they never fail to provoke feelings in people and they often provide an important social experience. As the internet and online video have developed music and sports have changed considerably. However this has not affected the communities that form around it as fans are now able to access and interact with the content online and offline.
The telecommunications operator Orange has developed an innovative online meeting place called Orange Arena, in collaboration with ACB (Association of Basketball Clubs) and technology partner Flumotion.
Orange Arena is an online community and meeting place that offers free streaming of concerts and sports games. The program includes live streaming of all ACB League Basketball games, as well as concerts of popular artists and music groups.
The videos featured on Orange Arena are a great success among music and sports fans. 100,000 unique users registered for the latest concert that was streamed by Orange and saw the music group McFly playing. According to Diana Carpio Fernandez, Sponsorship and Event Manager at Orange, “this platform unites sports and music contents, which previously were streamed on a variety of different sites. Orange Arena is an innovative offering for current and future Orange clients, as it creates online communities around exclusive and high quality multimedia content.”
Also the Basketball fans have demonstrated that the virtual meeting place with live streaming of all league games is a big success. “Orange Arena has enabled us to bring the games to a bigger audience”, explains Joan Manel Carreras, Business Development Director at ACB. “On average 40,000 users have followed the live transmission of the games and recently the number of concurrent users has reached 9,000.”
Online Video creates emotional ties with consumers
Orange has also chosen Flumotion as a technological partner to provide the Online Video Platform. “Orange Arena is a great example of how companies can use online video to boost brand awareness and create emotional ties with existing consumers,” explains Jean Noel Saunier, Co-founder and CEO of Flumotion. “People who feel emotionally attached to a brand and its community are your most faithful clients. At the same time, creating a thriving community with exciting content is a successful strategy for attracting potential customers.”
Flumotion’s Online Video Platform powers the live streaming and its podcasting feature makes concerts and games available on demand immediately after the live broadcast. The video player has been created with Flumotion’s Media BackOffice and is branded in Orange’s corporate colors. Orange mobile telephone customers always have a ticket reserved for them and can access the arena with their telephone numbers. Another bonus is the fact that they enjoy the games in high quality video without any advertising. All other fans can also register and enter the arena, but they need to reserve a ticket for each live event. They can view all events in medium quality with advertisements about Orange products and services.
About Orange
France Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunication operators with 170,000 employees worldwide, including 102,000 employees in France, and sales of 22.6 billion euros in the first quarter of 2011. Operating in 35 countries, the group had a customer base of 217.3 million customers on June 30, 2011, including 143 million customers under the Orange brand, the Group’s single brand for internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the company operates. On June 30, 2011, the company had 158.3 million mobile customers and 14 million broadband internet (ADSL, fiber) customers worldwide. Orange is one of the main European operators for mobile and broadband internet services and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.
About ACB
The Association of Basketball Clubs (ACB) was founded in Barcelona in 1982. ACB regulates and organizes the Professional Basketball League and is also known as Liga Endesa for sponsorship reasons. It currently consists of 18 clubs and generates a revenue of 130 million euro. ACB is considered to be one of the world’s best professional leagues and its national and international prestige results in an average of 485 million page views, 47 million visits and almost 1.200.000 unique users at its official site (www.acb.com) each month. These figures make the ACB website the most followed and visited in the Basketball world, only second to the most important basketball websites in the US.
