Perform, the UK-based digital sport and entertainment specialist and Virgin Media, the leading UK entertainment and communications company, today announced the launch of e-Player, a free-to-view multi-channel video player delivering sports highlights and video clips across the web. e-Player will be made available to digital publishers in the UK and embedded into websites to deliver a wide range of premium sports highlights and video clips, updated daily. The multi-channel player offers selected highlights from Virgin Media's Barclays Premier League and Coca-Cola Football League match content, as well as a portfolio of premium sports channels from Perform's Omnisport.tv brand, including European Football Leagues and international football plus tennis, golf, rugby, cricket, darts and basketball content.
e-Player will be made available across a number of the UK's leading digital publishers, including ITV Sport, News International (The Sun, The Times and News of the World), The Telegraph, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Trinity Mirror, Evening Standard, Metro and Bauer Publishing. Publishers receive e-Player for free, fulfilling the need for premium sports content and daily sports updates, as well as an advertising revenue share based on the amount of video traffic they provide.
Reaching an audience of over 20 million unique users, e-Player will offer a huge opportunity to advertisers and marks the next step in the development of the Online Video Alliance - a recently announced advertising partnership between Perform and ids, a Virgin Media company, to create the UK's leading online video advertising network, providing clients with over 30 million premium online video streams each month.
Oliver Slipper, joint-CEO, Perform said: "The product has sold itself; it aggregates the best mix of broadband sports content in the UK, content that in isolation would be beyond partners' reach, and plugs a major hole in many sites' premium sport offerings. We have secured distribution with many of the highest traffic, most respected online publishers in the UK, making e-Player the most exciting online video advertising proposition in the market."
Alex Green, managing director of Portal at Virgin Media said: "We've worked closely with Perform to develop an outstanding sports content package - for consumers, digital publishers and advertisers. e-Player is an innovative way for us to commercialise our football rights through a broader, market leading proposition and helps bring great sports content to a wide-audience of sports fans."
e-Player offers an impressive line-up of on-demand sports channels, including three channels from Virgin Media Sport: Premier League, Premier League Classics and The Football League, and several channels from Perform's digital sports brand, Omnisport.tv: European Football Leagues (including match highlights from Serie A, La Liga, Champions League Qualifiers and the UEFA Cup), Asian and South American Football Leagues, international football (including match highlights from FIFA World Cup 2010 Qualifiers), ATP men's tennis, WTA women's tennis, Grand Slam tennis, European and Asian Tour Golf, plus various additional sports including rugby, cricket, darts and basketball.
