Have you noticed that we are lovers of new technologies, and watching how these intervene in the day by day of our other passion, Soccer, is completely fascinating.
Did you know that each day more searches increase about master plays and funny videos? Could you imagine that also 80% of the sports spectators are multiscreen?
Currently to be a sports spectator does not mean to watch the game or game itself. Neither consists in limiting oneself to be just stuck to the television screen to see, for example, a game of World Cup Russia 2018 in real time.
This fact, so normal for all of us until a few years ago, has changed. And all have been thanks to the arrival of YouTube. Concretely, the video ’s platform, that appeared in 2005, has changed the way we watch, not only soccer but all sports in general.
Let’s enumerate the 3 principal aspects of the change that the social network has caused:
- The spectators do not only limit themselves to watch the game but while they are enjoying the show, they do searches: about the funniest videos, compilations of good plays or tutorials to learn to play themselves. Specifically, the viewing of this type of videos has grown by 50% on YouTube in the last year. How do you think that many young people have learned to do those fantastic freestyle tricks? YouTube has become the referent place to learn to do practically everything.
- There is a growth of viewings of “key moments” of the game, what is being the highlights. The spectators do not see the full match and, in many cases, neither they could do it in real time because of the differences in schedules. This makes that the users search increasingly more specific plays of the game. In fact, 70 to 100 of the best-watched sports videos of YouTube contain the keywords “great”, “greatest” or “best” in the title. You cannot fool us, for sure you to have watched in the last days some of those videos! Besides, the searches of outstanding soccer videos have grown by 90% in the last year and, in general, the outstanding searches of all sports have grown by 80%.
- The fans have become superfans and want to watch the match in their own way: they choose what to watch, when and in which screen. To get it, the best experience implies to use several screens at the same time, something that 80% of the spectators do, although it may seem unreal.
The data shows that the superfan uses a computer or a smartphone while watching sports live on television to search for information about a player, to send messages to other spectators or watch related videos, to take a photo to publish on the nets, follow a #hashtag or create a GIF of the goal’s play. Also, we need to add that a 30% assures to watch videos live of their favourite sports on the smartphone or tablet.
YouTube not only has changed the way we see a sport and soccer, but it has created a new dynamic so we can squeeze to the max any sport’s experience and be able to enjoy every second. We can say that, without the new technologies, soccer neither could be understood.
Think about the goals repetitions, the “Eye of the hawk”, the statistics in real time of what each player is running, the power of a jump, tip the speed, the study of the microcycles…. All of this and more is thanks to the technical elements that flood the stadiums more and more.
In B1 Soccer Academy we like to be well informed and utilized some of these elements to achieve a better performance in our methodology and so we will continue doing it!