Sports broadcaster Eleven Sports Taiwan has hailed the strong audiences generated by its global live streams of Taiwanese basketball and baseball last weekend.
Eleven showed live coverage of the Chinese Professional Baseball League’s three-game series between Fubon Guardians and Rakuten Monkeys from Friday to Sunday, and the Super Basketball League play-off game between Yulon and Pauian on Saturday. Coverage was available within Taiwan on the broadcaster’s linear, OTT and Twitch channels, and also streamed worldwide via the company’s Twitter account @ElevenSportsTW.
Eleven reported that the three live CPBL games generated a total of 3.6m views on Twitter, and the live SBL game nearly 500,000. Across all the video content that Eleven streamed on Twitter over the weekend, including replays of the games, the service had 6.3m views. Among the viewers was Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who tweeted a picture of herself – and her cat, Cookie – tuning in for one of the games.
Cookie & I tuned into the Taiwan @CPBL’s Opening Day, from home of course, to cheer on our outstanding athletes. Tune in every Tuesday-Sunday with us! pic.twitter.com/5ehp26xfUi
— 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen (@iingwen) April 12, 2020
The company also reported that 60 per cent of the international audience on Twitter came from the US, and that more than 1.4m in Taiwan watched its sports coverage on Twitch over the past week.
Eleven Sports Group CEO Luis Vicente said: “It’s been a truly rewarding experience to be able to offer our audience a return to live sport…In such a difficult period for the world and for sports, it is amazing to see some light at the end of the tunnel and to be able to bring the joy of live sport back to fans around the world.”
Eleven will this week show live coverage within Taiwan and globally on Twitter of the six-game SBL Finals between Taiwan Beer and Yulon Luxgen, with the first game taking place today.
The CPBL and SBL are among a small group of professional sports leagues in the world currently running matches, with almost all other play halted due to Covid-19.
Eleven Sports Taiwan launched in 2016. As well as the domestic baseball and basketball league, it has rights for international properties including English Premier League football and NBA basketball. It is part of Eleven Sports Group, the nine-territory international sports broadcaster owned by sports business entrepreneur Andrea Radrizzani’s Aser Ventures.
