Aston Villa make social media history

Aston Villa have broken the record books and put themselves straight into the new media hall of fame with their latest caper.

With Saturday’s game at Villa Park against Middlesbrough, Villa have become the first English team to successfully live stream an entire game via Facebook.

The scope of this achievement is not to be underestimated. Villa have been (rightly) criticised for their past output on social media platforms and the fact they have scooped a new media first is incredible.

It’s even more enticing because Villa won’t be shown much on TV overseas this season. Maybe this can offer a platform for fans to view Villa’s games this year?

Facebook Live is a recent development by the team over at FB. It’s a feature they are pushing and can enable verified pages to reach a huge audience organically. It’s certainly got its uses, as we now know.

Stream AMG handled the technical aspect of this and they had a lot to say:

The live stream covered Villa’s pre-season friendly match against Middlesbrough FC and was simulcast on the club’s AVTV channel. With video powered by StreamAMG, AVTV is a technology leader in club owned digital channels, providing the clubs global fan base with interviews, highlights, features and live content across the world, on nearly any device.Streaming to Facebook Live, AVFC were able to reach over half their global Facebook fan base with just this one post, an engagement level that shows live video engages audiences far more than other forms of media.

Will Radford, Aston Villa’s Head of Media, Content and Marketing said:

“This project was about creating an engaging piece of content that demonstrates Aston Villa’s commitment to delivering quality output to our global fanbase. We have a new focus on high quality media and aim to utilise the best platform for each opportunity where possible.”

This project kicks off StreamAMG’s second year as a technology provider to AVFC, which has seen two full preseason outings and a full season’s worth of content on the AVTV platform.

StreamAMG’s Director for Sport, Matt McKiernan commented that:

“Utilising StreamAMG’s far-reaching video acquisition network and delivery tools, we were able to quickly and reliably deliver the match to AVFCs global fan base. Our relationship with Aston Villa has always been around making the most of the full digital spectrum, Facebook Live is an obvious and complimentary choice to engage fans across many demographic groups.”