Sports Media Report
iQIYI Sports, a joint venture between iQIYI, Inc. (NASDAQ:IQ) (“iQIYI” or the “Company”), an innovative market-leading online entertainment service in China, and Super Sports Media, will be live streaming exclusively the 2019/20 season of LaLiga Santander (“LaLiga”) for the China market. LaLiga is the top professional football division of the Spanish football league system that is known for producing top-rated football clubs including Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. Aside from live streaming all 380 matches of the 2019/20 LaLiga season, iQIYI Sports will also produce and release original content on match information, match highlights and behind-the-scene footages throughout the entire season.
In addition to live streaming, iQIYI Sports is dedicated to applying its resources and technological innovation to enhance its users’ overall viewing experience of LaLiga. For example, PangHu, Rapper of iQIYI’s new-gen virtual band RiCH BOOM has been appointed as iQIYI Sports’ ambassador for iQIYI Sport’s LaLiga livestreams and will interact with football players in post-match interviews. Additionally, matches will be streamed at 50 frames per second, providing its viewers with the best sports viewing experience not just in content, but also in playback clarity and smoothness.
Viewers will also be offered a wide commentator selection that covers well-known veteran sports commentators to up-and-coming millennial commentators, in order to watch matches with personalized commentator combinations according to their preference. iQIYI has also engaged actors and artists from iQIYI’s original dramas and reality shows such as The Big Band and The Rap of China 2019 as iQIYI Sports’ Ambassadors for the LaLiga opening ceremonty to produce creative LaLiga-related videos. This allows fans to combine sports-watching with their iQIYI online viewing experience.
“iQIYI Sports’ goal is to maximize the value of sports entertainment by leveraging the content value of top sports tournaments and further enhance it through content promotion, marketing and membership services,” said Yu Lingxiao, CEO of iQIYI Sports. “We believe this integration between entertainment and sports is key to having iQIYI Sports become the industry’s leading sports entertainment service provider.”
Since its establishment in August 2018, iQIYI Sports has evolved into a multi-sport content ecosystem. Focusing on major sporting events and trends as well as original sports content, iQIYI Sports’ content database currently offers livestreams of more than 6,000 sports matches from 30 major sport tournaments, over 200 sports documentaries and 20,000 sports-related video clips, covering football, tennis, golf, and many other sports. iQIYI Sports is also working on expanding its content selection to include the Australian Open, Wimbledon Championships, UEFA Euro 2020 and many other popular world-class sporting events. iQIYI Sports also plans to add street dance, extreme sports, combat sports and documentaries about sports stars to its content selection in order to meet the diverse needs of smaller audience groups. Going forward, iQIYI will continue enhancing its content selection and user experience through innovative methods, so as to become China’s leading sports entertainment provider.
