Realtime fan experiences: Making them economically viable, at scale

Fan expectations pose an existential threat to fan-centric businesses. And that’s because what it means to be a fan has changed. Fandom used to be watching the Monday night game on TV or getting tickets for a concert when your favorite artist rolled through town.

But social platforms have made us all into content creators. And now fans want to play an active role. Increasingly, they expect ongoing interactive experiences that connect them with the creators, sports teams, and artists they love – and in some cases with millions of other fans. This has created an enormous opportunity for fan-centric organizations to open new revenue streams and strengthen their relationships with their audiences. As a result, we are witnessing a period of accelerated change and innovation in the experiences that fan-centric brands deliver.

However, companies face technological challenges that risk making these new experiences economically infeasible. In particular, the wrong architectural choices can mean that the cost of serving each new fan increases exponentially – making the most successful events become the least commercially viable.

Fortunately, with the right design decisions, fan-centric organizations can build fan experiences that succeed at scale. Here, I’m going to share what we’ve learned from helping broadcasters, artists, and sports organizations the world over make realtime fan experiences economically viable.

The exponential scaling problem

So, what is it about modern fan engagement that leads to this problem of exponential growth in costs? The core challenge comes from user generated content (e.g. chats, comments, and reactions) and, in particular, the need to deliver potentially huge volumes of data to each and every fan. Let’s put it in context to understand why.

Traditional broadcasting operates under a fixed cost model, meaning the expenses for infrastructure—ranging from satellite trucks to broadcast towers—stay the same regardless of audience size. Whether a football game is viewed by ten people or ten million, these initial costs remain unchanged. Once the broadcast signal is transmitted, it can be accessed by anyone within the service area. Therefore, while the up-front investment is considerable, there are no additional costs as the viewership within the geographic region increases.

In contrast, streaming economics are variable and scale with audience size. Each new viewer adds incrementally to the total cost, as streaming requires additional bandwidth and server capacity per viewer. But as the number of viewers increases, economies of scale kick-in. Content delivery networks (CDNs), media servers placed within ISP networks, and bulk bandwidth purchasing reduce the cost per viewer as the audience grows. That’s what made it economically viable for Indian over-the-top (OTT) streaming service Disney Hotstar+ to serve a record breaking 59 million concurrent viewers during the 2023 Cricket World Cup.

As fans now engage with potentially millions of other fans,  the data requirements necessitate a complete rethink of the economics.

Both broadcasting and streaming are one-way, whether you’re paying for geographic reach or per minute streamed. But interactive fan experiences turn everyone into a data generator. As more fans interact with each other, the number of interactions increases exponentially—this is the N-Squared problem.

The N-Squared problem in numbers

Unlike video streaming, where costs per viewer decrease, the cost of message delivery in a many-to-many environment grows exponentially. Instead of economies of scale, success means higher costs.

Let’s use the example of an interactive fan experience during a tennis match. Alongside the livestream, a chat-like feature allows fans to post messages and reactions. We have 10,000 fans watching the livestream and participating in the interactive experience.

If one fan posts a message predicting the outcome of the match, it must be delivered more or less instantly to the other 9,999 viewers. Things become complex when the other fans start responding. Even if just 1% of the other fans—100 people—react with emojis or replies, each of those 100 responses must be sent to all 9,999 other fans. This results in nearly a million message deliveries, all stemming from a single fan’s message and a small number of responses.

Let’s up the ante. With 100,000 fans, each posting twice and 1,000 of them reply to each original post, we’d see 2 million responses totalling 220 billion message deliveries!

But, of course, we’re not just talking about one fan posting once. If the average fan posts two original messages each hour and, in turn, each post generates ten responses, delivering everything to every fan gives us some very large numbers.


This leads us to an almost existential question for realtime fan experiences: is it possible to deliver them to growing numbers of fans in an economically viable way?

Serving fans and the bottom line

Delivering fan engagement experiences isn’t optional, so we need to find a way to make it work financially.

Live events like the Super Bowl or the Eurovision Song Contest draw massive international audiences. Many of those people feel that their experience is incomplete if they’re just passive viewers. More and more, people’s enjoyment of an event is tied up in their ability to interact with other fans in realtime.

So, how do you overcome the N-Squared problem in order to arrive at a predictable cost per user per hour?

The answer lies in the architectural decisions that feed into your fan engagement platform. Understanding the key challenge of fan engagement is crucial—that user-generated content causes costs to rise exponentially as more people join the experience. Knowing this, we can proactively design our systems to scale linearly rather than exponentially.

In particular, three architectural patterns hold the answer:

  • Batching: This is where you deliver groups of messages together rather than sending each message individually.

  • Aggregating: With aggregation, you compute what has changed and send only the results rather than the individual updates, reducing the overall amount of data transferred.

  • Partitioning: An approach based on segmenting the fanbase into sub-groups, so that messages are delivered to a predictable number of fans rather than to every fan every time.

Both approaches break the link between the number of fans engaged and the number of messages we must deliver. Let’s look at them in some more detail.

Batching: balance immediacy with efficiency

The N-Squared problem arises when we attempt to deliver messages and other interactions among a growing number of fans. In part, that rests on the assumption that every message must arrive as quickly as possible. But that isn’t true. Here’s why:

  • Not all messages are created equal: A goal notification needs to be delivered as quickly as possible but a slight delay in seeing reaction emojis—whether they appear instantly or half a second later—likely won’t affect anyone’s experience.

  • Human perception threshold: There’s a natural limit to how fast we can perceive information. Especially when fan attention is directed elsewhere, it’s unlikely that the difference between a single message delivered in 200 milliseconds (ms) versus waiting a little longer so that two or three messages can be delivered together would be noticeable.

By batching messages together we can significantly reduce the number of messages the system needs to send. This results in slight delays to message delivery, but as mentioned above it’s unlikely to degrade the fan experience.

There are several strategies for batching, each coming with its own pros and cons. Which you choose is less a technical decision and more about what type of experience you want to offer. In practice, you might combine them to help you balance fan experience with the cost to deliver the service.

Time-based batching

One way to get that fixed cost per user is to send messages at set intervals. With reactions in particular, they’re often happening in a narrow window. Let’s say there’s a big event in the livestream, such as a sports team scoring a goal or a musical artist playing a fan favorite song. Reactions will take place around the same time, so a lot of these events fire in very close succession.

Rather than send each reaction individually, we can queue them and send them in batches every 500ms or whatever time interval is appropriate. That will introduce a little latency but that’s the trade-off for achieving a predictable cost per user.

Priority based batching

One way to address the latency that comes with time-based batching is by organizing messages according to their importance. This method ensures that critical updates, like a goal scored in a sports match or an important announcement during a live concert, are delivered immediately.

High-priority messages bypass the regular queue through a system of tiered batching, where essential messages are sent on a more frequent schedule than those of lower priority.

Quota-based batching

Another way to address the latency introduced by time-based batching is to send messages once a certain number is in the queue. In quota-based batching, messages are accumulated until they reach a predefined limit, at which point the batch is sent.

During quieter periods, this method can introduce more delay, though, because messages must wait until the quota is filled before being sent. Another potential issue is that, in busier times, quota-based batching might make it harder to predict costs per user. As audience interaction spikes, the predefined quota is reached more quickly, resulting in more frequent batch dispatches.

Aggregating messages

Batching works because it reduces the number of messages the platform needs to send. But it can’t solve the N-Squared problem entirely. That’s because it doesn’t affect the overall size of the data the system needs to process.

Here’s why:

  • Message sizes become unwieldy: As the number of people engaged in an experience grows, there comes a point where we start to hit the practical limits of how much bandwidth a single device can reasonably consume.

  • Bandwidth isn’t free: Although we’re lowering resource usage by reducing the number of messages sent, the system’s bandwidth usage still increases as more people join. So, at larger scales the N-Squared problem presents itself in a different way.

What we need is a way to reduce the overall amount of data transferred. Instead of just batching messages together, we can adopt a more strategic approach known as aggregation.

With aggregation, we compute what has changed and send only the results rather than the individual updates.

Let’s go back to our tennis match example. Imagine we have four fans, one of whom sends a clapping emoji, while the other three send a thumbs-up emoji. Instead of emitting four emojis, we can send the thumbs-up emoji with a count of three, and the clapping emoji with a count of one. Even at this small scale, aggregation halves the volume of data we need to send.

But it becomes even more effective as fan numbers grow. Let’s say we now have 16 fans taking part. Seven send a thumbs-up and nine send a clapping emoji. Despite the increase in fans, we still need to send just two messages: clapping: 9 and thumbs-up: 7. That gives us a compression ratio of 87.5%.

Computing changes in this way and then batching them together effectively eliminates the N-Squared problem, giving us a fixed cost per user regardless of the number of fans. This makes the cost of delivering realtime fan experiences more predictable, and more economically viable.

Partitioning

Partitioning is another strategy for addressing the N-Squared problem. The idea is to divide fans into separate groups or rooms so that we reduce the overall number of messages the system needs to deliver. Ideally, partitioning should be seamless, meaning individual fans enjoy the experience without being aware of the segmentation.

To explore how partitioning works, let’s imagine an event with 1 million people taking part in the fan engagement. When one person posts a chat message that results in 999,999 deliveries. If just a fraction of the other participants responds, say 1,000 people, that then requires sending those 1,000 responses to the remaining 999,999 viewers. This results in nearly 1 billion message deliveries (1,000 responses × 999,999 recipients).

However, if we split the fanbase into separate groups then we can enforce an upper limit on how many messages we need to send. Instead of a single 1 million-person experience, we could run ten groups of 100,000 each. From a fan’s perspective, the core interaction – sharing excitement – remains the same.

But from a cost perspective, the number of message deliveries drops dramatically, enabling the cost per user (per hour) to remain the same. This contrasts to unpartitioned audiences, where the cost per user increases with audience size. Smaller partitions would make the cost per user even lower.

Smaller partitions would have an even greater impact. The lower pace of messages in a smaller partition probably offers a better fan experience since the number of messages they receive becomes more manageable. But, of course, this comes with trade-offs, too. While a fan probably doesn’t care if they see 1,000 or 10,000 cheering emojis, they might notice the absence of a friend or a popular community figure (VIP).

Both can be solved for. For VIPs, their messages could be broadcast across all partitions, maintaining their visibility and influence across the entire fanbase. For applications where having friends together is key to the experience, functionalities such as “watch parties” can be introduced so that friends can partition themselves, instead of being partitioned by the app.

Solving the realtime fan engagement problem at Ably

At Ably, we’ve worked with sports franchises, creators, entertainers, and broadcasters globally – including NASCAR, Genius Sports, Tennis Australia, and SRF – to help deliver reliable, scalable, low-latency fan experiences that provide a healthy return on investment. The infrastructure that we provide already makes our platform well suited to the fan engagement experiences of these customers. But we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what more we can do to overcome the unique challenges of delivering fan engagement experiences in an economically viable way. This includes us trying to solve the N-Squared problem.

So, we have been actively revising our pricing model and building new features based on some of the architectural patterns mentioned above. As a result, we will be introducing:

  • Message batching: This feature is designed to optimize costs and enhance performance in large-scale, high-throughput applications.

  • LiveObjects: This feature moves the aggregation problem down into the platform and API layer of our stack. It allows you to compute what’s changed and to only emit the computed change as opposed to the batch of each individual change.

  • Partitioning: We are at early stages of developing a partitioning solution and are actively talking to customers now on how best to design that. Please reach out to find out more, we’d welcome further insights.

  • Usage-based pricing that’s billed by the hour: Our pricing model gives you granular control over your costs. You only pay for what you use: messages sent, channels active, and connections made). This means you can budget effectively and avoid surprise charges. Ideal for limiting the costs of peaky high volume traffic surges.

The above article has been authored by Ably’s founder Matthew O’Riordan. If you are interested to see how you could benefit from working with Ably, get in touch and book a session with one of our sales engineers – or try our platform for free by signing up for an account today.

World Freestyle Football Association inks deals with Predator Energy and Fury Energy in Africa

The World Freestyle Football Association, together with acclaimed energy drink brands Predator Energy and Fury Energy, both trademarks of Monster Energy Corporation, have announced their collaboration to elevate four National Freestyle Football Championships in Africa and support their local communities in taking their competitive scene to the next level.

The four countries included in the partnership are Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda (together with Predator Energy), as well as Egypt (thanks to the support of Fury Energy). The agreement will allow these four tournaments to feature not just an electrifying Grand Final both for male and female freestylers, but also a touring roadshow in several locations across each of the countries to further excite and engage local football communities.

A core component of the roadshow will be the education and mentoring of 100 community leaders (Football coaches, NGO workers and teachers) within each country who are working with 16-to-25 year-olds. The WFFA’s FsLife Development training course will equip all community leaders in attendance with the resources and ability to build self-esteem and entrepreneurship through football within their communities.

The dates and locations for the National Freestyle Football Championships are as follows:

  • Nigeria: Lagos,21st September 2024
  • Egypt: Cairo, 9th November 2024
  • Kenya: Nairobi, 29th November 2024
  • Uganda: Kampala, 6th December 2024

Dan Wood, Head of Partnerships at the WFFA, said: “It has been a fantastic process to collaborate and map this partnership with the team at Predator & Fury. Their commitment to grassroots and the development communities across Africa is what really excites us at the WFFA and are proud to team up initially in these four dynamic countries”

Valentine Ozigbo, WFFA Non-Executive Director and Chairman of the event promoter Feet’N’Tricks, added: “We are really thankful to Predator Energy in Nigeria for this great partnership; we are able to build a flagship example of how Freestyle Football can transform the lives of people across Africa and the world when key stakeholders come together. We are truly excited for what can be developed together in the future”

Rob Adkins, Predator & Fury Energy Brand Director, said: “We couldn’t be more excited to be partnering with WFFA and to further strengthen our presence within football. Our ultimate mission is to build fans of our brands and to add value to local communities through football. The WFFA is already making an impact in that respect, so we’re keen to see how we can take this to the next level via our partnership.”

McLaren Racing extends partnership with NTT Data

McLaren Racing is expanding its partnership with NTT DATA, which will become an Official Partner of the McLaren F1 Academy Team.

Starting this weekend with the race in Zandvoort, the partnership will see the logo of NTT DATA, a global innovator of business and technology services, carried on the race car of driver Bianca Bustamante for the remaining races of the 2024 season and beyond.

The expanded partnership builds on NTT DATA’s existing agreement with the Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team. NTT DATA has been Arrow McLaren’s Official IT Services Partner since the 2023 season, supporting the team with data strategies and scaling analytical capability as well as being the title sponsor of the NTT DATA Strategy Control engineering centre that travels to track.

Matt Dennington, Co-Chief Commercial Officer, McLaren Racing, said: “We are delighted to further develop our partnership with NTT DATA into the world of F1 Academy – a relationship which has gone from strength to strength with our Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team. We’re proud to work closely with our partners to continue to open up motorsport to female drivers, and we are pleased to have NTT DATA join us on this journey.”

Mona Charif, Chief Marketing Officer, NTT DATA, Inc., said: “As a trusted global innovator of business and technology services, NTT DATA is proud to be associated with F1 Academy to support emerging talent and promote diversity across all levels of motorsport. Our partnership with McLaren Racing reflects our shared values and commitment to creating a more diverse and equal playing field on and off the track.”

Concacaf onboards Riyadh Air as airline partner

Riyadh Air, Saudi Arabia’s new digitally native airline wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), and Concacaf, the FIFA Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, have announced a multi-year partnership.

This partnership underscores Riyadh Air’s dedication to expanding its presence in global sports and connecting fans and communities worldwide.

As the “Official Airline Partner” of Concacaf, Riyadh Air will support all of the Confederation’s national and club competitions across North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, supporting the growth of men’s, women’s, and youth football. The partnership will bring together two ambitious organizations with a shared commitment to excellence and connectivity.

Osamah Alnuaiser, SVP, Marketing and Corporate Communications at Riyadh Air, said, “We are glad in Riyadh Air to announce this strategic partnership as the power of sport draws the world closer together. In Riyadh Air we connect communities and build bridges across cultures, languages and experiences. As one of the Kingdom’s most beloved sports, our partnership with Concacaf will bring passionate football fans closer to thrilling games and action where we reach all over the globe, especially in countries and territories in the Concacaf region. As the official airline partner of Concacaf, we are committed to developing the sport, enshrining our shared values of excellence in the skies and on the field.”

Philippe Moggio, General Secretary of Concacaf, said, “This partnership with Riyadh Air marks an exciting new chapter for Concacaf. Their global vision will support us in elevating all aspects of football in Concacaf, from grassroots programs to our world-class tournaments. We are particularly excited about the opportunities this partnership will create to connect fans across continents and inspire them to passionately follow the beautiful game.”

Chelsea FC signs Fever as Principal Partner

Chelsea FC has signed Fever as Principal Partner.

Fans will see the Fever logo on the men’s first-team kits worn today. It will also feature on the Chelsea Women and Academy players’ kits for their forthcoming seasons.

Full details of the partnership and the enhanced Chelsea fan experience will be unveiled at a press event in September at Stamford Bridge, where additional surprises and experiences for fans will also be announced.


Inspiring more than 200 million people every month, Fever has become the world’s leading technology platform for entertainment discovery. Fever has partnered with some of the leading brands and creators worldwide to power over 150,000 experiences and venues across all major live entertainment categories, including music, theatre, sports, cultural institutions, and blockbuster immersive experiences.

Chelsea fans can sign up at feverup.com starting today to be the first to know about the upcoming partnership and benefits.

Chelsea Football Club’s chief revenue officer Casper Stylsvig said of the partnership: ‘We are delighted to welcome Fever to the club as Principal Partner. As a company they have been hugely innovative in the live entertainment industry, helping their users to access events and experiences in a new way. Their service level is first-class, and we know they will help people discover not only Chelsea but also London as a city as well, in a unique and immersive way.’

Fever’s SVP of global business development, Mariano Otero, said: ‘Fever is thrilled to partner with Chelsea FC as we further our mission to elevate the fan experience for the world’s leading brands through innovative technology. This partnership will equip one of the world’s top football clubs with cutting-edge technology, creating even more exciting and creative ways for fans to engage with their team.’

Breaking the Mould: how Paris Olympics successfully embraced traditional and modern 

As France hosted the hip-hop Olympics and broke every coverage record, David Granger, director of Arc & Foundry looks back at the highs, the lows and the breaking.

As the baton passes across the Atlantic, as LA takes over from La belle France, as the Olympics goes to Hollywood, how will Paris 2024 be remembered? And what lessons can be learned from the good, the bad and the breaking for future coverage and partnership activation?

The XXXIII Olympiad set out its stall with an opening ceremony which fiercely divided opinion, bringing heavy metal to historical settings and revealing a deep lack of knowledge amongst some viewers. It also had its critics when the athletes arrived by boat, rather than traditional track parade – and during the event there was the odd disgruntled Parisian and tourist, inconvenienced by the boarding up of the Eiffel Tower and lack of boat rides along the Seine. It may have been a contentious start, but not one which was subsequently affected coverage.

Looking back, the uptake, interaction and consumption globally was beyond even the most optimistic of expectations. 

Top six stats? 

  • In the UK BBC Sport had 36.1 million viewers watched 15 minutes or more of the Paris Olympics on BBC TV – equivalent to 59% of the UK population.
  • In the US, NBC averaged 32.2 million daily viewers – a 76% rise from the Tokyo Games
  • In France, the opening ceremony was seen by 24.4 million viewers the most-watched event on French TV
  • The official social media handles had more than over 12 billion engagements, more than double that of Tokyo 2020
  • The Olympics was the No. 1 sports app in over 70 countries and the top used overall in key markets, including the USA, France and Italy
  • The IOC president Thomas Bach said half the world’s eight billion population will have tuned into the 2024 edition or connected with it on social networks

But… not everything was sporting and not everything was planned content. 

From those opening controversies there followed a series of arguments which were more fuel for social rage as subject for sporting commentary. From Algerian boxer Imane Khelif to French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati’s anatomy and from French diver Jules Bouyer’s swimsuit to Turkey shooter Yusuf Dikec, the online debates and opinions came thick and fast. 

They weren’t always warranted, they weren’t always in the spirit of the games, and for much of the time they were not related to sport. The debate rages as to whether Australia’s b-girls were inspired or put off by their athlete, Raygun. The irony of that event of course is that it won’t be contested in the US, the home of hip-hop culture which spawned break dancing. (In its place? Cricket. An interesting substitution).

In fact, arguably, Paris was the hip hop Olympics. Not only did rap luminaries such as Ice T wade into the breaking conversation, but Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav was a cheerleader for the US Women’s Water Polo team and then… and then there was Snoop Dogg.

Whoever came up with the concept of sending Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. (or Snoop Dogg to his fans) along to France needs to get a bonus equal to the pay day the West Coast rapper allegedly received. From torch bearer to closing ceremony and everything in between, including full equestrian get up, the man Molly Solomon, NBC’s executive producer of the Olympics described as an “ambassador of happiness” brought a whole new level of insight, information and entertainment to the event. And not just for the US audiences.

He was quite excellent at bringing not only the games, but the spirit of the games to audiences.

After the misfortunate which Covid cast over the Tokyo games, the Olympics were looking to re-set and Paris did exactly that. From the spectacle of the ceremonies to the full houses and sporting triumphs, it delivered.

The organisers and the athletes demonstrated that there is still exceptional return on the investment for those involved, but also it can appeal across channels and across demographics. LA has a tough act to follow. Paris brought the ancient venues, the traditional sports and the modern games and ensured sport triumphed in terms of coverage, athleticism and engagement, right across the demographics. 

Sources
www.olympics.com 
www.poynter.org
www.bbc.co.uk/sport
www.deadline.com

www.forbes.com

iSportConnect welcomes mycrocast as latest client

iSportConnect is delighted to announce mycrocast as the latest client of its Advisory division.

mycrocast is a SaaS audio platform that enables clubs, associations and leagues to create live audio broadcasts that can be consumed inside and outside the venue, without any need of special hardware.

Along with UEFA & the EHF, more than half of the German Bundesliga clubs, Ajax Amsterdam & BSC Young Boys have already adopted the technology.

Joe Rowland, Head of Partnerships, iSportConnect: “I’m delighted to welcome mycrocast to the iSportConnect network. When we first spoke with Marcel, it was clear they had developed a product which offers real value to clients in sport and the case studies they produced backed that up. We are excited to work alongside Marcel and the team to continue that growth journey as they look to expand into new markets”.

Marcel Hesse, CEO, mycrocast: “We are delighted to be working with iSportConnect to push ahead with our internationalisation. From the very beginning, we have been able to quickly build trust through our conversations”.

iSportConnect Advisory is a full-365 service offering strategic guidance, market positioning and relationship building in sport. iSportConnect is helping many organisations, such as InCrowd, ATPI, Magnifi, Tixr, EXL and many more, drive new business in sport.

Aurora Expands to the Middle East and appoints James Pearce as Managing Director, MENA

Multi award-winning production house Aurora Media Worldwide is expanding into the Middle East and has announced the appointment of James Pearce to the newly created role of Managing Director, MENA.

This strategic move is underpinned by the opening of a new Riyadh office alongside advanced plans to also operate a production hub in Abu Dhabi. It underscores Aurora’s commitment to delivering pioneering, high-end content across live, original, branded, and digital formats that aligns with the region’s ambitions for growth in sports, entertainment, and major events.

The new production bases will be led by James Pearce, who has been instrumental in driving Aurora’s expansion into the region over the past few years. Pearce previously held the post of Partnerships Director at Aurora and has a proven track record in developing new business, building strong relationships, and managing teams.

“Aurora’s unique position in the marketplace for innovative, high-quality content makes this expansion a natural progression,” said Lawrence Duffy, CEO of Aurora Media Worldwide. “Our pioneering approach and focus on innovation aligns perfectly with the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s own ambitions to forge ahead with building on the growing interest in sport, entertainment and major events.”

James Pearce expressed his enthusiasm for the new role: “I am thrilled to lead Aurora’s expansion in the Middle East. The region is rich with talent and opportunity, and we are eager to harness and contribute to its growing media landscape.”

Aurora, part of the All3Media Group which was recently acquired by joint venture investment platform RedBird IMI, has already established a significant presence in Saudi Arabia. Projects include various live and non-live productions, including host broadcasts for Formula E, Extreme E, E1 Series and Supertri, hosted in Riyadh, Jeddah and NEOM, and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Endurance Cup in AlUla.

In addition to live productions, Aurora has been involved in a host of original, branded, and digital content projects in the region. These include content for the Royal Commission for AlUla, covering short form originals to digital branded content during the festival seasons, and programmes for the Fursan and Camel Cup. Aurora has also created a short form documentary for the Saudi Surfing Federation, hosted on Shahid. In the UAE, Aurora is producing digital content for Nike, including the new football kit launch for Al Ain FC, the UAE’s most successful football club.

Nottingham Forest FC signs cryptocurrency brand Floki as official partner

Floki, the cryptocurrency ecosystem has been announced as an official partnership with Nottingham Forest Football Club.

Floki will utilise the partnership to promote itself as well as its sister brand Valhalla, the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) which brings a fresh spin to the classic creature-collection adventure game in a lively world.

As Official Partner, both Floki and Valhalla will gain substantial global visibility throughout the season of the Premier League at all home matches, including 19 Premier league matches and domestic cup games.

The Premier League is the biggest domestic club competition in the world reaching over 2.7 billion viewers per matchday. Viewers can expect to see Floki’s and Valhalla’s presence on the home match perimeter boards, and across an extensive range of digital and social media assets , affirming the brand’s strategic market presence and global visibility.

Nottingham Forest was formed in 1865. The club has won 11 major honours during their history: one league title, two FA Cups, four League Cups, one FA Charity Shield, back to back European Cups (now the UEFA Champions League) and one UEFA Super Cup.

Nottingham Forest Chief Operating Officer, Paul Bell said: “We are delighted to welcome Floki as official partner and look forward to working closely with them as we head into the 2024/25 season. As one of the most innovative companies within this sector, we’re excited to work collaboratively with the Floki community.”

A media representative of Floki said “ We are proud to join the ranks of the Premier League with a club that is an institution in world Football. Just as Nottingham Forest are building a future as a dominant force in world football, Floki is on the same journey to establish itself as one of the most successful brands in its sector, constantly challenging and innovating with brands like Valhalla.”

Paris shows Olympic Games not Mission Impossible in multi crisis world as IOC’s top gun prepare to sign off

Olympic Games advisor, Michael Pirrie, says the Paris Games has returned the mega sporting event to its premier status in the world, and cemented legacies of major reform for the Olympic Movement under IOC President Thomas Bach and his lieutenant John Coates.

Paris ended its Games in spectacular style with Tom Cruise diving into Stade de France as MI field agent Ethan Hunt and leaping onto a motorcycle with the Olympic flag before leaving the Olympic stadium bound for Los Angeles.

This was a dream Hollywood ending to the Paris Games as the Olympics move on to the world’s movie capital. 

It was Risky Business but not Mission Impossible as Cruise followed in the footsteps of Daniel Craig and James Bond 12 years earlier on Her Majesty’s Secret Service, accompanying the late Queen on a surreal helicopter ride from Buckingham Palace and parachuting into the Stratford Olympic Stadium to open the London Olympic Games.

The Paris Olympic Games had its own cinematic qualities and themes as well spanning the human experience.  

Set against the backdrop of a world in turmoil, on the brink of full-scale war in the Middle East, threats of nuclear annihilation by Russia, and return of fundamentalist terror groups in Europe, on the Olympic home continent, Paris staged a joyful Games that thrilled and excited world-wide audiences.  

The success of Paris was the high point of IOC president Thomas Bach’s tumultuous term in office, the latest in a succession of some of the most improbable Games scenarios to confront an Olympic leader

These include the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games on the politically divided and dangerous Korean Peninsula packed with nuclear missiles; Tokyo Summer Games in the middle of a killer global pandemic; and the cold diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games amid concerns of serious Chinese human rights violations .  

The delivery of Paris and other Games on Bach’s watch, under his signature reform agenda, has been consequential.

This has enabled the IOC to keep the sprawling multibillion dollar Olympic enterprise of global Games assets, events and operations functioning more effectively than widely thought possible in such turbulent times. 

Bach’s reforms, which provided a blueprint for Paris, have enabled him to formally announce he would stand down next year at the end of his 12 year term in office.

Bach can now step away from the IOC presidency with a sense of deep accomplishment and achievement in the aftermath of Paris   

When elected Bach likened his role to that of a conductor, coordinating the IOC members and sections of the worldwide movement to provide a unified performance for audiences.

OLYMPIC SYMPHONY IN PARIS

If so, the French capital brought core elements of Bach’s reform program together in a compelling symphony of sport, perhaps entitled “Agenda 2020 concerto plus in Paris..”

Paris was an Olympic ‘Ode To Joy,’ echoing the composition’s radical call for equality, freedom and unity that reflect the spirit of France and Olympic values.  

Bach, and longtime collaborator, IOC senior vice president John Coates, have redefined thinking and possibilities around the selection of host cities and  staging the Games to help address challenging global conditions impacting the Games.

These have included declining interest amongst western cities and nations in hosting, economic instability, scarce resources, climate change, spiralling venue and infrastructure construction costs, as well as corruption, doping, and post-Games legacies. 

There had not been a fully successful Games since London in 2012, before Bach’s presidency, and Paris was the moment the Olympic Movement had been waiting for.

Paris enabled the Games to return to a major European capital, with no major organisational problems or scandals, a beautiful host city, world famous venues and huge viewership. 

This was the opportunity for the Games to recover after the isolation of Covid and return to its premier status in the world. 

PARIS GAMES REVOLUTION

Paris redefined the appearance of the Games, and for the first time this century there were almost no new venues.

Designed around the Agenda 2020 reforms scaffolding, the look and layout of the Paris Games was dramatically different, utilising existing and temporary venues.

The city was utilised like never before with no central Olympic Park cluster of new venues, andsports spread across central Paris and surrounding neighbourhoods in already built or temporary settings and spaces.

This changed the shape of the Games and lowered budgets

The reforms were designed to reduce venue costs and infrastructure to enable host cities to focus on Games operations and services funded largely by private revenues from IOC Olympic partners and other Games assets such as ticketing.  

Paris has been a Games changer and Games saver as well, increasing interest in Games bidding cities following a decline after massive infrastructure budgets incurred by host cities last decade on new venues and projects not included in original Games proposals

This was made possible by the expanding global industry in mobile and recyclable venue construction parts and services, such as seating, tents and generators leading to a new era of flat pack Games. 

The sector is revolutionising major events, bringing old ‘dinosaur’ venues back to life as well as creating new short term purpose venues, and will feature prominently at the Los Angeles and Brisbane Games. 

The new approach, led by IOC President Thomas Bach and John Coates, was designed to make the Games more affordable, sustainable and appealing for cities in times of global turbulence and economic uncertainty . 

The reforms are also at the heart of worldwide efforts by governments, world governing bodies and international federations to contain costs by using existing and temporary stadiums and supporting infrastructure.  

Existing buildings and temporary structures and spaces in Paris were adjusted and converted into high functioning venue environments that witnessed electrifying sporting performances.

The grandeur and majestic beauty of many of the Paris venues helped to highlight the potential of the new Games model, supporting the new emphasis focus on already constructed venues and temporary settings and backdrops.  

The shift to the lower cost Games model has helped to avoid community protests and unrest over venues in Paris that have often marred previous Games. 

In the  recent post-election political gridlock in France, activists, protestors and residents were discussing pension and work retirement issues, not cost of Olympic venues.

IOC leaders are hoping this could mark a fundamental shift in the Games narrative for host cities, governments, and governing bodies, often forced to defend budget blow outs and little return on investment.

While Bach’s agenda points to new directions, priorities and concerns for the Games in a multi crisis world, Paris also built on Olympic heritage and traditions.

France, a nation of freedom fighters and defenders of human rights and liberties, amplified the core peace mission and message of the founder of the Olympic Movement and IOC, Parisian, Pierre de Coubertin.

The need for peace was hyper present in Paris.

Ukraine’s presence in Paris gave witness to the world of the unfolding apocalypse and was a symbol of extraordinary resilience and survival.

“It always was very chilling as you see the rocket flying, but you don’t know where it will land,” one Ukraine athlete said.  

“They (Russian athletes) support this war, they (Russian soldiers) kill our athletes, children, people. They destroy our homes,” the athlete said.

The horrific toll Russia’s war has taken on Ukraine’s athletes and sports system – more than 500 senior athletes and coaches have died, hundreds of sports facilities have been destroyed or attacked and thousands of children and teenagers have been evacuated, kidnapped or in hiding – means that the nation may soon be unable to field teams at future international events   

UNITED BY HUMANITY OF THE GAMES 

The Agenda 2020 reforms helped to provide a compelling Games environment in Paris

The Games was a reminder of what unites the world even in troubled times, in a celebration of humanity, camaraderie and competition and of people achieving the seemingly impossible in improbable circumstances 

OLYMPIC AURA RETURNS 

In a football heavy world, the extraordinary diversity of skill, determination and achievement involved in the 32 Olympic sports on display in Paris produced outcomes beyond comprehension even in the world’s top sporting competitions

Athletes defied gravity as well as expectations of what was humanely possible. 

Swedish-American pole vaulter, Armand Duplantis, soared so high he almost needed a parachute and oxygen mask before taking off inside Stade de France and soaring towards the heavens breaking his own world record. 

The Games attracted a galaxy of the greatest athletes of the generation from the premier leagues of golf, tennis, basketball, swimming, track and field and other codes – from LeBron James and Novak Djokovic to Rory McIlroy, who said Olympic golf “might be the purest form of competition in our sport, we don’t play for money in it. It speaks volumes for what’s important in sports.”

The Games also produced the greatest stories in sport

These included an athlete whose great grandfather was on Schindler’s List, and while competing in Paris drew on the strength and spirit of her late grandmother who survived the Holocaust 

The Holocaust survivor escaped to Paris in 1944, where 80 years later, her granddaughter, Jemima Montag, would win bronze in the Olympic race walk, finishing under the arches of the Eiffel Tower that once beckoned as a beacon of hope to her grandmother eight decades earlier.

Montag, representing Australia, was inspired by wearing her grandmother’s bracelet, marching in her memory and footsteps.   

Conclusion

The success of Paris, new Games model, increased interest in hosting the mega event, and the Bach-Coates agenda of reforms will leave consequential legacies for the Olympic Movement as potential presidential contenders begin to consider their own agendas for the most important position in world sport.