The World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) has long been using its YouTube channel to bring top-level DanceSport to a growing audience of young enthusiasts who tend to spend more time online than in front of a television set. Over the past few days, however, WDSF established entirely new benchmarks with the YouTube coverage on the 2011 World DanceSport Championship Latin.
For WDSF, as for many other International Sports Federations, the challenge has been to find the balance between protecting the exclusivity to event coverage granted to broadcasters around the world and meeting the exectations of the users of the alternative, young and global outlet YouTube. Building on recent experiences, the 2011 WDSF World DanceSport Championship Latin held on 10 September at the Suntec Convention and Exhibition Centre in Singapore was covered extensively through both, TV as well as YT.
A local host broadcaster produced the six-camera signal that will be distributed worldwide as a 52-minute highlight through WDSF television partner IEC in Sports. WDSF Communications, on the other hand, produced play-by-play action with a single camera and made it available as individual dances on YouTube - in nearly real time.
Catering to an international community of committed DanceSport fans, most of whom are active athletes themselves, WDSF Communications added instant results and some commentary on its website.
This formula is not new, having been pioneered by WDSF in 2010 and gradually refined with reporting on world and continental championships since then. What was notably different this time was the level of viewer interest generated by the online coverage. The "Live from Singapore" feed shattered all of WDSF's previous records with more unique visitors to its website than ever before, visitors spending 15 minutes average on the site, and, above all, record numbers of videos viewed through YouTube.
Remarkably, the trend continues for the fourth day running. On 13 September, three days after the Singapore World Latin, the WDSF channel, was ranked # 1 among the YouTube Partners in its primary territory Spain, where WDSF has its offices and where the channel is registered. It left some of the most successful Spanish channels and some of the strongest brands in all of sports behind. In second place for the day was the official channel of Champions League winner FC Barcelona.
WDSF ventured in earnest onto the YouTube platform when SportAccord, the organisation made up of all International Sports Federations, brokered a deal and provided its members with the opportunity to become a Partner Channel. More than 30 members are currently united with their channels on the SportAccord Sports Hub. Among all of them, WDSF was ranked first in numbers of videos viewed for the past 30 days (600,000+) and first in videos viewed per day (70,000+).
