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I see this as an interesting option for second screen use during games. How quickly after the plays happen do the fan highlights appear on Grandstand?
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@rjshupak This is a real time app. Once fans upload their videos to Grandstand they are immediately available to users. So once you see that great play on TV you can get another angle from the crowd right away.
@rjshupak Thanks for the reply. The videos come in fairly quickly if stadium has good wifi! (1-3 minutes approx). Most are uploaded during the first commercial break after the video is taken. So yes, second screen is for sure an option here.
thanks @shyrosenzweig and great question. Grandstand is more "snackable" fan highlights than live streaming from the stadium. It's meant for fans who want to re-watch a play that happened a few minutes earlier. We've seen the four major NA sports leagues embrace these highlights, ever since the explosion of fan content began on Instagram and Snapchat. The NBA is at the forefront.
“The way we’ve looked at it, we've been incredibly protective of our live game rights," Adam Silver (NBA Commissioner) said this year at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston. “But for the most part highlights are also marketing.”
@shyrosenzweig yeah, I'd second this thought. As a fan, I love to check out fan clips, and I've watched a TON of Royals fan videos from the stands during the playoffs. Seeing fellow fans celebrate is a beautiful thing! I do wonder how the leagues feel about this. While they encourage fans in the stands to take photos, post and tag them appropriately online (and often showing them on the big screen), video is a whole separate issue. Have you guys connected with any of the social media groups in any of the leagues? This year, Deadspin and SB Nation got hit hard with DMCA takedowns from the NFL, Big 12 and SEC for posting just GIF highlights. The question might be: where will these leagues draw a line? They might have to make explicit and direct policies as more as more people switch to consuming sports digitally through apps like MLB.TV, NFL Game Pass, or NFL Sunday Ticket in order to push people to use their platforms. Reference for Deadspin DMCA takedown: http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/...
And by the way, I do think this is a really cool product. It'd be awesome to have the functionality built in partnership with leagues if that is what it takes to make it legit :)
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@dfry09 - Great opportunity and the app is buttoned-up nicely. What is the value prop for the producers? How did you solve the chicken & egg problem and get so much content available before launch? How do you ensure quality on the platform (i.e. do you vet videos and tag them internally before they go up?) Really excited about what you're working on, thanks for the reply!
Thanks @domjespo ! Video producers get their content seen by an engaged sports audience in real-time, instead of posting to an uninterested audience on other platforms. We also re-post the best videos on our Instagram account (@getgrandstand 47k + followers). We've been in a private beta since September so we've had some time to market the app before this week. Grandstand also acts as an aggregate, so there's incoming content in addition to Grandstand uploads. We've got a sharp content team in place that tags videos with appropriate player and play tags (Kobe Bryant, "Buzzer Beater", etc) and they also remove content if need be.
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Great work @dfry09. To piggyback off of @shyrosenzweig and the copyright issues, how do you envision monetizing this concept? I have heard of apps that have similar functionality, but the end users are journalists / bloggers who purchase the content for their commercial use. It doesn't appear this is the direction you are going, but I thought I'd open up that question, and see what you guys are thinking. Any other verticals (other than sports) you are thinking of taking this?
Hey @nemrow and thank you. We definitely see the appeal in Grandstand for other verticals, but our initial focus is sports. The live aspect and nature of sports and the need for fan videos NOW (during the game) is what makes the content valuable. Monetization strategy can go any number of ways! But until Grandstand has an established our user base, we're focused on creating the best possible product.
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@dfry09 - Great strategy. The internal editing team is what I thought and 100% necessary. Love that you guys are seeding the market through aggregation. Do these stadiums have any kind of technical restraints on what can be uploaded from a protocol perspective through the app? If so, technically how does the platform account for that?
@domjespo No tech restraints from the stadium, however Grandstand videos cannot exceed 30 seconds in length. Our content team tracks each video when games are live.
As avid sports fans, we (Daniel & Ryan) always asked ourselves "I wonder what it would be like to be there" and "what did that play look like from the stands". The answer to these questions were difficult ones.
With all the amazing content readily available to sports fans, none of it allows fans to get a feel for the raw emotion that exists in sporting events around the world. This is why we created Grandstand. Instant access to sports highlights from the fan's perspective in the crowd.
We are passionate about this app and want to provide the best experience to our users. We encourage you to download the app and discover all the features. Let us know what you think we are doing well, and what we can do better. We really appreciate all of your feedback.
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@dfry09 Hey man. I love it it. Nuff said. Is it any chance that we could connect maybe by email. I'm also working on a sports second screen/social network and would love to get some advice from you guys. Also I think you might like my idea and see a possibility of us working together some how. Please reach out.
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I've been downloading a lot of these sports apps lately. And no offense to the others, which generally don't add that much if any additional value beyond what ESPN and the league's own apps provide, this seems to be the opposite and does offer something unique.
I'm not 100% sold I'll use it regularly, because clearly the well-produced highlights that you can already get just are better highlights... but for an occasional change of pace, I'll definitely keep it on my phone.
Good work.
Grandstand
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