Unique visitors to NHL.com Int’l's six European-language websites increased 28% during the ’19-20 season compared to last year. Overall visits were also up 25%, and social media numbers soared even higher: Facebook video views increased by over 1,000% in some countries, while views on Twitter jumped by as much as 442%. NHL.com Int’l Senior Dir & Editor in Chief Matt Cubeta, who oversees the six sites along with the league’s French and Spanish pages, attributed the NHL’s digital success in Europe to several factors. "Our audiences are in constant growth in Europe," Cubeta said. "It’s almost like an untapped market that we’re trying to hit." To do so, the league has leaned on social media -- video views on the NHL’s Czech-language Facebook page, for example, are up 1,070% year over year. "Over the past two seasons, we saw Facebook happens to be extremely popular in the Czech Republic," Cubeta said. "So, we targeted a lot of our content on Facebook and that’s where our video consumption really soared." Video views on the social media platform more than doubled for five of the NHL’s six European-language channels during the ’19-20 season. Cubeta: "We really learned across all of our languages the past few years, that Facebook is a large driver of video consumption."
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