FIBA Scores Record Digital Audience

A junior basketball game this week between the Philippines and China generated a record online audience for a FIBA youth game of 1.5 million streaming views.

The 25^th FIBA Under-18 Asian Championship group phase game (the Filipino team won) on August 8 in Nonthaburi, Thailand, racked up the impressive total on a combination of platforms, including FIBA’s Facebook, YouTube and Sina accounts in addition to viewers of the Sports5 Philippines Facebook page and Tencent and other sites.

Nicolas Chapart, FIBA Head of Digital, reacted enthusiastically to the result. “It’s a record for us for any youth game,” he said. “Last year, the biggest streaming audience for a FIBA youth game was 800,000. So it’s a big advance.”

He added: “We don’t necessarily try to bring people to one place for streaming. Our strategy is to distribute widely, in order to reach them where they are. They might watch live on Facebook or YouTube or a national federation page.”

FIBA boasts an aggregated digital audience of 16-17 million viewers. 

As of August 8, FIBA had 386,085 Twitter followers, 5.461 million Facebook fans, 470,764 YouTube subscribers for its own channel and 601,751 Instagram followers. The digital total actually aggregates a much wider range of social media partners and pages.

“Our is to grow that total to 20 million by the end of the year,” Chapart said

Asia looms very large in the digital picture. “The Asia markets love basketball and they are digitally savvy,” he said.