Hi, I’m a Senior Business Analyst in BBC Sport.
Back in November, Neil Hall wrote about our new approach to covering live events online. The Live event pages had their first outing for a major event during the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. Today I’m going to write about the additional features that have been introduced for the World Cup.
With World Cup matches being in the evening here, we expect that most people will be using tablet and mobile devices, either as a second screen or for when they can’t be in front of their TV (hopefully not spoiling too many weddings in June and July). Over the last year we’ve seen a huge increase in audiences consuming content via their mobile and tablet devices, with 70% of audiences coming to us on them for live coverage towards the end of the Premier League season. Therefore we have focused on enhancing the pages for these devices.
We’ve been listening to your feedback since our Beta launch of this product in November.
Thank you to everyone who commented, it has been invaluable in helping us to prioritise the improvements we have made to the page for the World Cup.
The Digital World Cup
The live pages will be at the centre of the online coverage:
- There will be a special World Cup Sportsday live page every day, to keep you up to date on all the gossip and action everyday of the tournament.
- There will be a live page for every match where you’ll be able to watch live video from the BBC TV games or listen to BBC Radio 5 Live commentary for every match.
- For BBC TV games there will be streams available with alternative commentaries and player cams.
- You’ll be part of the atmosphere on all pages with our live reporting that brings together expert commentators with the best comments and opinions from social media.
- You’ll be able to catch up on the whole match or watch key highlights from every game.
- We’ve created a platform that powers the BBC Sport app on connected TVs. So you’ll also be able to watch all the live streams available online, on your TV.
- You should find that the initial load of the page is quicker and you are able to get a summary of what is happening straight away.
What’s New?
Friday, 30th May gave us a chance to look a back on England’s World Cup glory, with the World Cup Rewind of the ‘66 Final. It also helped to give you a taste of the treatment World Cup pages will get.
We’ve introduced a Head to Head Score Module in the Summary area of the page, as well as modules for Live Scores and Group Tables. These features are fully responsive so you'll be able to see them on live pages for the first time on mobile devices.
The same modules have been reused on the World Cup homepage and within match reports. In the future for next season's football coverage, including the return of the FA Cup to the BBC.
The way these are powered means that the statistics get to the page faster than ever, meaning you’ll always be up-to-date. Watch out for Matthew Clark’s, our Technical Architect, blog on the technology that has been used. Additionally when you can’t follow the action you can sign-up for team alerts in the BBC Sport app.
Live uses the BBC’s Standard Media Player for video and audio playback, this means we can take advantage of any new SMP features straight away. For the World Cup this means:
- You get high-quality video playback. All video on World Cup Live Pages will scale up to HD quality.
- If you’ve missed the beginning of a match whilst it is live, you can choose to rewind and watch it from the beginning or whatever point suits you.
- You can jump to the start of a predefined segment (e.g. the second half) or a significant key moment (e.g. a goal) using the Chapter Markers feature.
-- You may remember this from the London 2012 Olympics. It was one of the most used features in the desktop Interactive Video Player. This time we’ve worked on making it available on iPads & Android Devices.
- When you want to listen to the Radio 5 live commentary there’s a slim line audio player, meaning you can listen and follow the reporting & stats in a more compact layout.
Second Screen
When you are at home, watching the games on the biggest screen in the house you can also use the World Cup live pages as a second screen to get closer to the action.
Join the debate with other fans, watch in game highlights and make your voice heard on the key issues that are being discussed on TV and online with our new interactive vote module.
Over the summer we'll be listening to your feedback and we'll powering even more live events across the BBC, from Glastonbury to major news events. We've got plans for more features and are keen to hear how digital complements your experience of live events, so please leave a comment.
Claire Johnson, is a Senior Business Analyst in BBC Sport.
