Irish Football Club Experiments With ShotClip To Help Fans Make Engaging Videos Together

According to Facebook they are now getting over 1 billion videos viewed on their site each day‎. And over 50% of people who come back to Facebook every day in the U.S. are  watching at least one video daily.

From these statistics, it’s obvious that video is important for people when it comes to consuming content. This is important for  organisations who wish to communicate with their customers on a regular basis.

And it is no different in the sporting world!

In fact, some would say video is a key content driver that assists sports organisations to engage with their‎ fan base on a weekly basis.

One such company, ShotClip, from Ireland is at the forefront of engaging fans using video content with a specific focus on sharing fan experiences on social media platforms.

‎Set up in August 2013 by Irish entrepreneur Conor McNally, the business has been busy developing the platform.

Conor McNally, said “The idea behind the platform came as a result of  brands struggling to acquire relevant and engaging user videos.   ShotClip solves this problem by enabling brands to crowd source video content within their app. A brand can run a crowd movie campaign which provides a new type of brand engagement and results in crowd generated content”.

McNally continued, “The idea for ShotClip came from the poor quality videos that many people post to social media. A good quality video tells a story, it has the right sequence of shots to tell that story and the shots are edited together properly.  ShotClip helps users do this by giving a shotlist template for the movie. All the user has to do is add a clip to each advised shot and by doing so they are filling up a story and making a movie.”

This year Shotclip moved into the sports sector with an innovative pilot with Finn Harps FC, a League of Ireland Football club.

Background on Pilot

ShotClip partnered with Finn Harps FC to create content of their important end-of season playoff match.‎

Finn Harps was actively seeking innovative ways to engage their fans on social media and show content to fans who don’t make it to the game.  The club looked at some competitor apps like periscope but these did not fit the bill.

The club then came across ShotClip who offered a new type of fan engagement through crowd movie making. The club wanted to trial the ShotClip solution both from an engagement point of view and as a means to document the games for Fans who were not at the match.

During the first pilot this season, 20 Finn Harps fans used the shotclip app to record and document both the match and the fans at the game. As a result the storyline for the video was filled with multiple clips from multiple fans and from many different angles. This gave Finn Harps a crowd sourced movie for the game.

Results

The results have been impressive for a small football club. The first video posted to Facebook received 10,000 views and a second video posted by a fan received 2000 views.

These are impressive figures as the average home game at Finn Harps matches are around 800 for regular league games this season.

The video footage provided Finn Harps with significant social reach, at little to no cost, while at the same time increased engagement of their fans by getting them involved in the crowd movie.

Conor McNally, Managing Director at ShotClip said, “This is the first pilot we performed with a sports organisation. It has become very evident that our platform is ideal for sports events or organisations and we are hoping to expand the pilot with more football and sporting events over the coming months.”

Aidan McNelis, Marketing Manager at Finn Harps said, ” We were introduced to Shotclip by the CEO of Mobstats, another Irish tech startup.  We could immediately see the potential it had.  The ability to film our matches using footage from many sources to document the game and get across the fun of it all.  Donegal is a place that has been ravaged by emigration so it’s important to us to find ways to reach out to the diaspora.  Shotclip, along with Mobstats is another way to help us keep those fans who are away from home but still supporting our club.  Video content is a powerful marketing tool in its own right and if you can show fans having a great time at our games you can’t really ask for better than that!  We can’t compete with the premiership for glamour and pizazz, but for atmosphere and entertainment we have a great story to tell, and Shotclip helps us do that.”

This article was written by Geoff Wilson. Geoff runs his own Sports Consultancy, working with clients such as FIFA across the world. He is also on the board of SportNI.  You can follow Geoff on twitter @geoffwnjwilson or connect on Linkedin at www.linkedin.com/in/geoffwnjwilson