The national federations of 10 countries have signed up to the International Basketball Federation’s (Fiba) new multi-cast initiative, with the sport’s global governing body keen on securing further partners before the end of the year.
The national federations of Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Sweden and Ukraine teamed up with Fiba to live stream qualifying matches for the men’s EuroBasket 2017 national team tournament online.
A total of 11 games involving the 10 countries were streamed online through Fiba’s official channels on social media network Facebook and video-sharing platform YouTube. Some games were also streamed on the federations’ own digital channels.
Fiba said that 440,000 views were recorded for the 11 games. Existing agreements between national federations and broadcasters were protected through geo-blocking in the territories covered by television rights deals.
Swiss Basketball earlier this month became the first federation to trial the initiative when broadcasting the national team’s qualifiers against Cyprus and Iceland.
Fiba said it would explore similar deals with national federations and broadcasters for the remaining qualifiers for the women’s edition of EuroBasket 2017, which take place in November.