Hotstar, the digital arm of Star India, has been the pioneer of bringing leading sports content, LIVE and non-LIVE, over-the-top. Their goal has been to disrupt the digital streaming industry with their tech-led innovations and content. Over the last three years, Sportz Interactive has partnered with them to build their digital innovations and bring the campaigns to their audience in the most innovative, creative and uber-cool way possible, across all platforms on digital media.
'Be the fan you are showing the content to has always been the primary motto when curating a strategy for the wide array of tournaments broadcast on Hotstar. The push from executing tune-ins (Match Linked Content) to crafting campaigns to engaging the audience first and juxtaposing them back to the website has been of utmost importance.
A case in point, in order to amplify our 2017 End of Year sports highlights tray on the website, we created a campaign for social media wherein every leading sporting hero, featuring in the tray, was visualized into an early 90’s Bollywood poster. The thought behind this was to bring a quirky touch of an otherwise overused territory of player posters and graphics.
There are a lot of firsts done together with our partner when it comes to digital innovations and content on social media. The launch of the widely successful play-along game on Hotstar for the VIVO IPL 2018 used Sportz Interactive’s proprietary real-time gaming engine and was the first of its kind in Indian sports.
We have also been leaders in digital content and were one of the firsts in sports media to team up and create a 'Press & Hold' visual on the Facebook platform, creating an #ISLGoalOfTheWeek, where users needed to press and hold the creative in order to see who featured in our #ISLGoalOfTheWeek.
Another campaign worth highlighting is the #HotstarCricketForecast. The video-driven campaign involved roping in Star India’s premier anchors and talents during the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 and having them pose as old, regionalized news presenters delivering quirky forecasts ahead of India’s games in the tournament. With this, we successfully managed to take match previews to a more fun and engaging level.
Hotstar's intent is to drive traffic to its pages for the demographic to consume the content it has to offer. Hence, the digital initiatives are stitched around that objective, but also keeping in mind that it needs to engage the audience while achieving its aims.
Play-along - VIVO IPL 2018: The play-along game on Hotstar was a real-time second screen experience for the fans, complementary to the LIVE Video experience. Contextual trivia/predictive style questions, related to live match events, with a countdown timer were pushed to the OTT platform. Users were awarded points in real-time based on correctness of response and time taken to answer them.
#2017 Rewind: The hashtag was launched towards the end of 2017 on social media with athletes depicted in Bollywood posters styled from the yesteryears.
Har Match Ka Live Ticket: A campaign released in 2018 educated fans of the Indian Premier League that Hotstar would make the matches available anywhere and anytime. The drive led towards a subscription pack that could allow a fan to break the shackles of a television and indulge in their favourite sport on the digital platform.
Hotstar, the digital arm of Star India, has been the pioneer of bringing leading sports content, LIVE and non-LIVE, over-the-top. Their goal has been to disrupt the digital streaming industry with their tech-led innovations and content. Over the last three years, Sportz Interactive has partnered with them to build their digital innovations and bring the campaigns to their audience in the most innovative, creative and uber-cool way possible, across all platforms on digital media.
'Be the fan you are showing the content to has always been the primary motto when curating a strategy for the wide array of tournaments broadcast on Hotstar. The push from executing tune-ins (Match Linked Content) to crafting campaigns to engaging the audience first and juxtaposing them back to the website has been of utmost importance.
A case in point, in order to amplify our 2017 End of Year sports highlights tray on the website, we created a campaign for social media wherein every leading sporting hero, featuring in the tray, was visualized into an early 90’s Bollywood poster. The thought behind this was to bring a quirky touch of an otherwise overused territory of player posters and graphics.
There are a lot of firsts done together with our partner when it comes to digital innovations and content on social media. The launch of the widely successful play-along game on Hotstar for the VIVO IPL 2018 used Sportz Interactive’s proprietary real-time gaming engine and was the first of its kind in Indian sports.
We have also been leaders in digital content and were one of the firsts in sports media to team up and create a 'Press & Hold' visual on the Facebook platform, creating an #ISLGoalOfTheWeek, where users needed to press and hold the creative in order to see who featured in our #ISLGoalOfTheWeek.
Another campaign worth highlighting is the #HotstarCricketForecast. The video-driven campaign involved roping in Star India’s premier anchors and talents during the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 and having them pose as old, regionalized news presenters delivering quirky forecasts ahead of India’s games in the tournament. With this, we successfully managed to take match previews to a more fun and engaging level.
Hotstar's intent is to drive traffic to its pages for the demographic to consume the content it has to offer. Hence, the digital initiatives are stitched around that objective, but also keeping in mind that it needs to engage the audience while achieving its aims.
Play-along - VIVO IPL 2018: The play-along game on Hotstar was a real-time second screen experience for the fans, complementary to the LIVE Video experience. Contextual trivia/predictive style questions, related to live match events, with a countdown timer were pushed to the OTT platform. Users were awarded points in real-time based on correctness of response and time taken to answer them.
#2017 Rewind: The hashtag was launched towards the end of 2017 on social media with athletes depicted in Bollywood posters styled from the yesteryears.
Har Match Ka Live Ticket: A campaign released in 2018 educated fans of the Indian Premier League that Hotstar would make the matches available anywhere and anytime. The drive led towards a subscription pack that could allow a fan to break the shackles of a television and indulge in their favourite sport on the digital platform.