Goal.com launches weekly Facebook Live show as it steps up commercialisation on the platform
Football media platform Goal.com has launched a new interactive chat show exclusively on Facebook Live featuring a full studio production sponsorship from deodorant brand Sure.
Studs Up will air live every Thursday on Facebook Live
The Studs Up show will air every Thursday at 8pm (GMT) live from London’s Gfinity e-sports arena and will be hosted by Rory Jennings, best known for his work on YouTube, alongside Mock the Week’s Nathan Caton and CapitalXtra DJ and presenter Emma Conybeare.
Produced by Goal’s in-house team the show will feature an array of guests from sport and music enjoying the fun side of football, with regular features, challenges and chat.
Broadcasting the show on Facebook is a natural progression for the Perform Media-owned platform which already holds daily Facebook Live streams for its 56 million followers across its international Facebook pages.
“We’re the first to admit that football can take itself too seriously sometimes, so Studs Up will revel in the lighter side of the game,” said Goal’s global editor in chief James Marley.
“With an engaged Facebook following of more than 56 million fans, Facebook is the perfect platform for us to launch Studs Up. We’ve been using Facebook Live for some time now, seeing it as a great way to interact with our fans and bring them closer to the sport they love. We see Studs Up as an important evolution of this work and that’s why we’re confident it will be a great success.”
A regular feature on the show will be the ‘Goal Pressure Index Powered by Opta’ and presented by Sure. The Unilever brand-sponsored segment will use a unique Opta algorithm to determine which players are managing to handle pressure the best and is part of Sure’s #NeverMoreSure campaign.
Martyn Jones joint managing director of Goal Studios – Perform Media’s digital football agency – said the experience of working with Facebook Live has allowed the company to “understand the platform better, learn from what other publishers have done and feel confident in how we might generate revenue”.
He said the partnership with Sure represented an “authentic brand-led experience” which demonstrated how Goal has “anticipate commercialising the platform in the future”.
Other features on the show include transfer gossip ‘Believe-O-Meter’, skill challenges from YouTube freestylers FFDTV and guests nominating friends for the ‘Worst of the Week’ player which will see them pinned up on the Studs Up ‘Wall of Shame’.
Last year Goal.com claimed the accolade of the most shared publisher on social media after outperforming the likes of the BBC, BuzzFeed, New York Times and Mail Online and so the new show will help strengthen its position as a major player in the online football media landscape.