Britain's top pay-TV provider BSkyB, has teamed up with Twitter to bring clips from soccer matches in the European Champions League directly to users' feeds in real-time.
While it's been pretty common for soccer fans to follow matches on Twitter when they can't get to a TV (particularly in the U.S. where most UEFA Champions League encounters take place during the week) the new deal between Sky and Twitter will allow users to see goals, spectacular misses, saves, and other match highlights in real-time.
Match clips from the Champions League will appear in users' feeds as promoted tweets.
Twitter is hoping that adding live soccer action to its feed will help increase advertising and sponsorship revenue ahead of its IPO.
Sky on the other hand, is hoping that getting onboard with the social network will help increase awareness and engagement regarding its live coverage of this season's UEFA Champions League, the world's biggest international club competition. Sky is also hoping that engaging with Twitter will help it generate more interest in NOW TV; its new Internet service that allows viewers to buy 24 hour blocks of access to content, as opposed to requiring that they maintain an ongoing subscription to the service - something that's proved difficult to convince people to do in the midst of the economic downturn.
The partnership between Twitter and Sky is enabled by Grabyo, a real-time TV clip sharing platform. Grabyo Studio will work in concert with Twitter's Promoted Tweets to bring users the real time video clips as the matches are broadcast live by Sky Sports.
Sky previously used Grabyo to follow last-minute player transfer dealings on the final day of the English Premier League's transfer window in September. That trial run proved successful, generating over 570,000 clip views in just 12 hours, with over 6,000 clips being re-shared across various social networks, and a total reach that topped seven million users.
"We know that lots of people want access to great Sky Sports content but would rather dip in and out rather than having a full subscription," said Gidon Katz, Director of NOW TV. "Sharing UEFA Champions League clips in real-time on social platforms helps us to highlight the benefits of instant, pay-as-you-go access to Sky Sports via NOW TV."
The entire project kicked off Tuesday, October 22, with Sky Sport's coverage of the UEFA Champions League, which is broadcast by Fox Sports in the U.S.