From cementing a physical presence in the U.S., New York made “too much sense” for Grabyo, a social video management and editing platform. The London-headquartered company has announced its entry into the States with long-time sports and entertainment executive Mike Kelley leading the move as President of the Americas.
Kelley, who previously worked at NeuLion and served as a consultant to Grabyo in 2016 before coming on board full-time earlier this year, told SportTechie he’ll head up business development, marketing, operations and account management, among other responsibilities, as he grows the New York office.
“From a core set of clients that we work with now, New York is the hub for sports and media. … A majority of our clients and potential client base is here but there’s certainly others out in L.A. as well,” added Kelley.
“We need a full time presence here in New York and work with clients in this market on a week-in, week-out basis.“
In addition to the U.S. expansion, Grabyo — which has partnerships with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, among other social entities — also announced rights owners beIN SPORTS and Rugby International Marketing (owner of The Rugby Channel OTT service) as its first clients in the United States. Prior to them, Grabyo had worked with the likes of the NFL and FOX Sports on a project basis but not in a full-time capacity.
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“We’ve been impressed with the speed and usability of Grabyo’s video platform and have had considerable success with instant highlights on our social platforms. We are also excited by the opportunity to monetize instant highlights and live streams, providing our advertisers with another attractive vehicle to reach our viewers and fans” Carlos Chaves, Digital Media Director at BeIN SPORTS said in statement.
Added David Sternberg, CEO of Rugby International Marketing in a statement: “Grabyo massively simplifies the production of video on multiple social platforms and we’re excited to partner with them. We’re ramping up activity across several social platforms to build USA Rugby’s fan base, monetize our media distribution and drive traffic to our OTT offering.”
Grabyo’s Kelley said that the video platform, which also counts the English Premier League, BT Sport, La Liga and Real Madrid as partners, has seen its clients’ needs around live streaming increase as teams, leagues and media networks continue to grow their audience online. Kelley cited BeIN SPORTS’ live streaming of college football games last year via Facebook Live as an area where Grabyo could provide value through its cloud-based platform along with niche properties like World Surf League and other more well-known leagues such as the NHL.
“Live streaming is a huge interest for a lot of folks based on what rights they have in different markets around the market,” Kelley said. “We’ve seen the evolution of clipping and editing of highlights and pushing those out and now there’s a focus of live streaming.”