Digital Media Cafe Blog 3rd December: Featuring Real Madrid, Whistle Sport, Tribute to Philip Hughes and Formula One – David Granger

New Sporting Platform: Real Madrid Sign Up Microsoft

We kick off though with the news that Real Madrid has moved from football team to content producer to platform creator.

One of the first, perhaps brave, moves into not only owning the content, but now the medium as well.

Built in conjunction with Microsoft, the Surface Pro 3 promises – don’t they all – to put fans at the centre of their content.

The interesting thing is that the platform is fully customizable, so you get to choose how your digital experience works.

Whether this constitutes an entirely new platform or a just a glorified app is up for debate by people who do semantics better than us, but it is an interesting move by Microsoft.

Because as well as the usual PR stuff about Real Madrid being maniacally focused on putting fans at the center and how this new dynamic digital platform will fuel their passion for the game of soccer, the final sentence says Microsoft hopes the success of this new digital platform will catch the attention of other major sports organizations.

So, while Microsoft aren’t in the social game yet, perhaps they are hoping this new, cloud-based platform will help them get signed up by some major sporting teams.

Changing Channels: The Millennials’ Way To Watch

As sport becomes ever more expensive to consume, it might just be that the next generation of fans have got things sorted.

The prevalence of clips, streams and players means their sporting fix is as likely to come from their tablet as the TV.

This was noticed by John West, the CEO of Whistle Sport, who decided to play this to his advantage.

He had seen how his kids were watching video content and recognised just how different it was to his media consumption.

So Whistle Sport created a YouTube channel which not only partners up with some of the major associations such as the NFL, NASCAR and PGA Tour, but also, crucially, the company has signed up content creators – professional athletes who not only are good at their sport, but also put together great videos as well.

And all this content goes through the Whistle Sport channel which has, to date more than 9 million subscribers who have clocked up 1.3 billion views through a network of 208 channels.

And it’s this networking which is the clever bit. Not only hosting great content, but also partnering up with other players means Whistle Sport has produced a great way for those millennials, actually all of us, to watch sport. There’s a link to their site and their YouTube channel on this week’s Digital Café blog.

 Twitter Tributes: Phil Hughes Remembered

As we’ve seen before social media can do a lot of damage, and it’s occasionally not a great place to reside.

However, the alternate view is that it can act as a great channel to demonstrate the better side of human nature.

The tragic death of cricketer Philip Hughes prompted heartfelt messages and one of the ways it was done was via Twitter.

Using the hashtag #putoutyourbats, athletes and teams paid tribute to the Australian – and not just those with a cricket or Aussie connection – there was a really nice tweet from Arsenal FC, one from Czech Cricket and the trend even reached Chicago, not your traditional homes of cricket. But it’s heartening to see so many people paying tribute to a sporting life cut tragically short.

When social media gets it right, it really can be used as a force for good in the world of sport.

Social Breakthrough: F1 Makes it to YouTube

We mentioned at the top that F1 had made its grand entrance into the social media arena.

Well… we may have been slightly more than economical with the truth.

As the excellent F1 blog WTF1.co.uk pointed out, this is no official YouTube channel we’re talking about, rather it’s a clip as part of a vote for the best action clip from FIA events in 2014, with Daniel Ricciardo’s race winning pass on Fernando Alonso at Hungary representing F1.

So it’s not the opening of the floodgates for social content for F1, rather it’s – as WTF1 says – the first, and surely the only Formula One clip on YouTube.

Well, the only one with Bernie Ecclestone’s approval any way.

Having spent eight seasons in Formula One managing the digital channels for world champions Red Bull Racing, David Granger now runs Fact 51, a social and digital content agency.

David’s