Summary: Wildmoka helped the event’s organizers publish more video, win more engagement and increase betting revenue in 2020
Breeders’ Cup is the organizer of The Breeders’ Cup World Championships, the annual climax of the North American horse racing season. The event, first launched in 1984, attracts horses from across the world, as well as racing fans and sports bettors.
In 2020, Breeders’ Cup, their digital agency Grand Slam Social and betting partner TVG/FanDuel were facing a unique set of challenges. Covid-19 lockdowns meant fans and bettors could not attend the event in person. At the same time, Breeders’ Cup wanted to up their social media game and be the first to publish results, highlights and other shoulder content ahead of other providers. Unfortunately, they did not have the capacity to publish all this video manually.
Shona Rosenblum, principal of Grand Slam Social, summarizes what the companies were looking to achieve:
- Grow engagement (which is key for increasing betting activity)
- Be first to publish highlights and increase overall volume of event content
- Diversify digital content – clips, highlight reels, live races from linear TV, profiles of racehorses
- Diversify content sources – including from mobile phones, studio commentary, analysis, trackside interviews
- Easily train new editors to support volume growth
- Allow the digital team to work from home in line with social distancing rules
Breeders’ Cup and Grand Slam Social turned to LTN Networks for the IP video infrastructure and Wildmoka to provide a ‘digital media factory’ that would help publish all this content.
Wildmoka at the Breeders’ Cup 2020
The 2020 edition was the first time Grand Slam Social’s digital team used Wildmoka. So, how did it work?
Betting company TVG provided content including races, talk shows and shoulder content which was delivered to LTN Global. LTN then passed these streams to the Grand Slam Social/Breeders’ Cup team, who used Wildmoka to edit and publish clips.
Shona Rosenblum reports that during the two-day event, Breeders’ Cup produced in the range of 500 social media posts across various channels and over 1,000 throughout the week. Video posts were published on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as well as the Breeders’ Cup’s website and apps.
This significantly improved previous workflows which required nearly 10 minutes to get a single video highlight posted to social and digital, long after others already published content to market. In contrast, with Wildmoka, that time reduced to less than one minute. “Wildmoka technology allowed us to be first to post for the first time. This set us up to break the news of our Champions and celebrate their wins before all other media” says Rosenblum. “It was a banner year for social media impressions, engagement and video views.”
Grand Slam Social’s teams found Wildmoka easy to use. “We had no issues, we could do all we needed to do” Rosenblum explains. “It was super easy to use and streamlined our process to publish to multiple destinations”. Staff could be trained quickly and as many new seats as required could be added to the license at no extra cost. Rosenblum summarized, “for Breeders’ Cup, Wildmoka was a no-brainer”.
Wildmoka also was particularly helpful during lockdown. Because Wildmoka is a cloud-based SaaS platform, Rosenblum’s team of editors could work from home using a web browser to do all the editing and publication – there was no need to install special software. They could then access a variety of content feeds from the field – provided by TVG or linear TV – as if they were working at the office. She also noted Breeders’ Cup had no scalability issues – all feeds were scheduled and worked as desired.
The versatility of Wildmoka’s “digital media factory” goes beyond than clipping and publishing content. When Breeders’ Cup’s live-media servers went down, the team recovered by quickly switching to Wildmoka live streaming, allowing them to run feeds on Facebook Live.
Impact of Wildmoka
The ability to publish more content faster had a major impact on the Breeders’ Cup’s KPIs. Compared to the previous three years, Rosenblum reports that:
- Net audience growth increased by 48%
- Betting handle also increased significantly
- Impressions were up 22%
- Video views increased 23%
- Engagement rose 28%
One of the most popular content pieces was the daily Morning Show during the week of the Breeders’ Cup. Wildmoka let editors clip extracts of shows and add in sponsor logos and tags in real-time. This bolstered value to their sponsors, boosted loyalty, and drove conversations around betting that could be correlated to increased handle at Breeders’ Cup as compared to the last time the event was held at Keeneland.
Ahead on the stretch
With an increase in the volume of content published via Wildmoka, Breeders’ Cup boosted engagement and video views around contender content which contributed to an increase in online wagering. This would be an impressive feat at any time but even more during a pandemic year.
To see how Wildmoka can increase audiences of your sports event, read our customer stories, or get in touch for a free, no-obligation demo.
