Starsports.com and Vodafone India join hands

Starsports.com and Vodafone India aim to enrich the live sports experience through social media.

Starsports.com, in association with Vodafone India, announced that it is the first broadcaster and brand advertiser to participate in the Twitter Amplify program in India. The program has been developed to tap into the growing social conversations around TV programmes, especially live sports.

Sports fans will be able to experience this product during the ongoing cricket series between India and England played in that country. For the last 12 months, Starsports.com has been shaping the digital experience for sports fans in India, most recently in IPL where nearly 30 million fans followed the tournament.

Through Twitter Amplify, Starsports.com now plans to enhance viewer-experience across the web and mobile by offering high-quality clips of sporting action directly to consumers engaged in conversations on Twitter around live games. This is likely to lead to greater engagement around live sports in social media as well as create an opportunity for fans to consume the action without leaving the conversation.

The Twitter Amplify program enables broadcasters to publish videos to Twitter and then jointly monetize the premium content by creating sponsorship packages. Powered by Promoted Tweets, the program will "amplify" the reach of the video content distributed via the broadcasters' and sponsors' Twitter accounts.

For advertisers, Twitter Amplify, apart from social conversations, also provides a multi-screen audience engagement strategy essential to satisfying users' needs to consume content whenever or wherever they want it.

Says Rishi Jaitly, India market director, Twitter, "Broadcasters and brands know that Twitter is a natural TV companion that drives audience tune-in, engagement and affinity. We look forward to working with cutting-edge broadcasters and advertisers, like STAR Sports and Vodafone, who want to tap into a compelling second screen experience We are delighted that cricket fans can now enjoy TV highlights in real-time on Twitter."

Ajit Mohan, head, digital business, Star India, says, "This program is a new innovation for us to understand the possibilities of being present when the conversations are happening on Twitter."

Vivek Mathur, chief commercial officer, Vodafone India, says, "As a brand we are always looking at innovative ways of driving brand engagement and conversations on social media. We are excited about being the pioneers in launching a new social innovation in India centered around Twitter and cricket."