Fiba claims first with new Periscope venture

The International Basketball Federation (Fiba) has expanded its partnership with social networking platform Twitter to incorporate a new initiative utilising its live video broadcasting app, Periscope.

Under the arrangement, Fiba and Twitter will provide fans access to players straight after the games during the final phase of the ongoing 2015 Fiba Americas Championship and EuroBasket 2015 national team tournaments.

Fans are being encouraged to come up with questions they want to ask their favourite players during the post-game press conferences which will be shown on Periscope.

At each press conference of both continental championships – which can also be viewed on Fiba’s channel on video-sharing platform YouTube – one fan's question will be asked in real time to a player from the winning team.

Fiba said this is the first time Periscope will allow fans access to a place previously reserved only for accredited media.

The partnership between Fiba and Twitter will be in place for the semi-finals and finals of the Americas Championship, running from September 11-12, and for the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals of EuroBasket 2015, running from September 15-20.

Fiba and Twitter have previously worked together through last year’s launch of the ‘@FIBA scores’ functionality, which enables users to find out in real time the scores of games.