The FIBA 3×3 digital team streamlined the workflows and tools needed to share short-form digital media with basketball players on more than 70 teams around the world.
FIBA 3×3: By the Numbers
Overview
Alongside traditional basketball, FIBA has built 3×3, half-court basketball into multiple world competitions for men’s and women’s teams and an Olympic sport — thrilling fans at some of the most engaging events around.
The organization’s 3×3 digital team wanted to streamline how they shared short-form digital content with players across more than 70 teams worldwide. They knew transforming their athletes into social media stars held the key to increasing reach to new global fans — driving value to partners and growing the sport.
With Greenfly’s AI-powered, real-time digital media management software, the FIBA 3×3 team has automated content organization and distribution with players to boost global basketball fandom — saving significant staff time.
“Helping our players build their presence on social media to attract new fans is a top priority for us. Greenfly is tailor made for this.
Our athletes are so excited to receive new content immediately and tell their stories to grow their brands, fan communities and the 3×3 discipline.”
Esteban González
Social Media & Digital Content Manager, FIBA 3×3
Opportunity
The FIBA 3×3 digital team understood that growing a smaller discipline sport today means building an engaged global fan community through their favorite athletes on social media. Helping 3×3 basketball players expand their public social profiles by giving them fresh short-form media would drive fan engagement, awareness and tune-in for their competitions and attract new partners.
Players continually asked for their game images and highlights to tell their stories. But manually tagging assets and delivering them to athletes through email and WhatsApp text chains was daunting for the busy digital staff of two. During live events, they needed to:
- Aggregate content from multiple sources into the FIBA storage system
- Organize these media assets in real-time while handling other gameday operations
- Provide immediate access to many players across over 70 teams and dozens of events
The FIBA 3×3 team sought a solution to fully orchestrate their digital media.
Partnership
The FIBA 3×3 team chose Greenfly to streamline content operations and drive awareness and promotion for 3×3 basketball.
Greenfly Connect automatically tags imported content that the digital team and their freelance photographers capture during competitions and photo sessions and routes it to the FIBA CMS. With intelligent routing rules, it then sends this digital media, along with WSC Sports video highlights and “top plays of the game” clips, to curated event and team galleries in the Greenfly web portal and mobile phone app.
Players get immediate Greenfly mobile app notifications to access these personalized photo and video galleries. They love the easy-to-use app and ready-to-use content as they get off the court. They — or their reps — can browse and share their favorite moments to immerse fans in the non-stop gameday action and entertainment.
Impact
With Greenfly, the FIFA 3×3 team has satisfied fan demands for social engagement, delivered through the players. FIBA has expanded fan reach and connections, furthering its mission to develop and promote the game of basketball by uniting the sport’s global fan community.
Player profiles across men’s and women’s teams have grown in tandem, including Belgium’s Thibaut Vervoort and Portugal’s Joana Soeiro, and expanded FIBA 3×3’s global fanbase. Social sharing analytics in Greenfly highlight the most active users and popular content to direct future digital team strategies.
As one success, during the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, the FIBA 3×3 digital staff, players and their national federation social teams accessed content in this way. This capability became critical due to pandemic travel limitations. Players and their federations also received requests to share custom promotional content, including hype videos, to tease and amplify messaging for upcoming competitions with suggested social copy.
The team has also increased efficiencies. Automating content workflows saved approximately 60 hours of staff time in one week during the FIBA 3×3 World Cup 2022.
Looking ahead to the FIBA 3×3 World Tour and World Cup 2023 events and the Olympic Games Paris 2024, the team plans continued player profile and fan community expansion to further propel basketball worldwide.
Photos: Courtesy of FIBA 3×3
