Eleven Sports, the OTT platform seeking to disrupt traditional broadcast models, has announced the launch of its ‘Watch Together’ feature, enabling audiences to engage in live sports content together ‘with friends and family in the same online space at the same time, for the first time ever’.
Updating stake holders, Eleven Sports the OTT platform provider broadcasting Spain’s La Liga Content in 2019, states that ‘Watch Together’ seeks to bring modern social engagements to standard sports viewing.
The OTT broadcaster plans to roll out its ‘Watch Together’ feature in its international OTT (over-the-top) markets, with a trial period expected to launch in the coming weeks.
The ‘Watch Together’ feature has been co-developed with the help of social engagement start-up Reactoo, – tasked with delivering deeper social engagements for the Eleven Sports network.
As part of the new feature, subscribers will be able to create a ‘room’ and invite up to four fans to share the emotion of watching a live sports event.
Those in the room will be able to see, hear and chat while watching the live action, enabling them to debate the talking points and celebrate every goal as if they were all together.
Tom Middleditch, Global Head of Digital, Eleven Sports detailed: “Live sport is special because of the raw emotions that are attached to it. Watch Together enables fans to share these emotions and debate every decision, kick, tackle or punch, wherever they are. This is an exciting first for ELEVEN.
“Watch Together will help to drive engagement in the live event by encouraging active, as opposed to passive viewing habits. Currently, fans debate talking points on text or social media while watching a match or fight passively, but our inventive new product will enable in-person interaction while remaining fully immersed in the action..”
Reactoo CEO, Marc Williams also spoke on the collaboration: “We’re on a mission to make watching sports more fun and engaging by enabling fans to watch with each other from anywhere.
“Using the latest technology, we are making it easier for all sports fans to share those special moments and we are proud to be the first watch together tech platform to introduce this transformative product to the global sports market”.