FIBA the world governing body for Basketball and Perform, the global digital sport specialist have today announced an agreement which will bring live and on demand FIBA basketball action to online fans around the world.
Perform will develop a new, high quality video console for FIBA and its 5 continental zones (FIBA Africa, FIBA Americas, FIBA Asia, FIBA Europe and FIBA Oceania) through www.fibatv.com which will include a live and delayed subscription service, free 90-second highlight clips, advertiser funded interviews and features as well as 250 classic games. The deal will mean that fans will be able to login to watch games from the FIBA Continental Championships and the 2010 FIBA World Championships as well as view and search games from the online FIBA Archive.
Perform will also assist FIBA in commercialising its new media rights across mobile and Internet platforms through their global rights and advertising sales team. To compliment this, Perform's Internet and mobile highlight production services (currently used by the Barclays Premier League and the English Football Association) will also be made available to FIBA with Perform managing live game ingestion, editing, commentary, encoding and distribution across FIBA's new mobile and internet partners.
In 2008 basketball was one of the most viewed sports at the Beijing Olympic Games and, with qualification for the 2010 FIBA World Championships up for grabs, competition within the EuroBaskets and other FIBA Continental Championships is expected to be particularly fierce.
Mr. Patrick Baumann, Secretary General of FIBA, said: "Delivering the latest basketball content around the world and to have the FIBA Archive on-line are key priorities for us as FIBA looks to increase our reach in new territories. Perform has the proven ability to deliver the highest quality and most up-to-date content to key audiences through its established distribution network, whilst also supporting us technically to deliver to our current digital partners."
Perform's Joint CEO, Mr. Oliver Slipper, stated: "Basketball is a major global property and it has incredible online potential as the future of sports looks to web and mobile to reach its target audiences. From our perspective this partnership provides a fantastic opportunity for us to continue our expansion globally and we very much hope that we can facilitate FIBA's new media rights expansion and ultimately help build the profile of basketball worldwide."
