LALIGA, Play Anywhere and Ease Live Win 2024 IBC Innovation Award for Groundbreaking Interactive Experiences

LALIGA, Play Anywhere and Ease Live (an Evertz company), announce that they have been awarded the prestigious 2024 IBC Innovation Award in the Content Everywhere category for a LALIGA global interactive deployment.

The partnership has revolutionized LALIGA’s global sports broadcast and streaming experience by providing viewers interactive, contextual content through its broadcast and streaming partners, significantly enhancing audience engagement and unlocking new advertising opportunities. The results have been high levels of user engagement and dramatically increased viewing times.

Leveraging Play Anywhere’s groundbreaking Interactive Rights framework, the platform provides full transparency of rights to LALIGA’s rightsholders, as well as transparency of revenue allocation and disbursement throughout the LALIGA distribution ecosystem.

Ease Live’s interactive graphics platform, integrated with Play Anywhere’s patented Clearinghouse and Compliance platform, has enabled LALIGA to deliver groundbreaking live interactivity for fans. The interactivity enables fans to engage in real time with instant highlights, live player and game stats, polls, quizzes, leaderboards, and other interactive features during matches. The experience has driven a 25% increase in watch time and has created fresh monetizable advertising and sponsorship inventory for LALIGA and its partners.

Jorge de la Vega, Executive General Director at LALIGA, commenting on the award, said: “Our collaboration with Play Anywhere to give viewers a truly interactive solution has provided our fans with an enhanced viewing experience while creating new revenue opportunities for our broadcast partners.”

De la Vega further explained: “By integrating interactive content into our broadcasts and OTT streams, LALIGA can offer fans a richer, more immersive experience that extends viewing times and boosts interaction. This, in turn, enhances the value of our media rights by creating new avenues for monetization.”

Play Anywhere and LALIGA first provided viewers with integrated interactive capabilities through LALIGA+, the league’s multi-device streaming platform and app. The interactive solution was used by viewers across multiple continents, with 30% of viewers interacting when given the chance.

Kjetil Horneland, Ease Live’s CEO, commented: “Winning the IBC2024 Innovation Award is a testament to the power of interactivity in driving both fan engagement and new revenue streams. Together with LALIGA and Play Anywhere, we have demonstrated that interactive experiences can transform the viewing experience while delivering significant value to broadcasters and advertisers.”

Yaacov Ben-Yaacov, CEO of Play Anywhere, added: “Our collaboration with Ease Live and LALIGA has allowed us to provide a solution that not only captivates fans but also simplifies global monetization for broadcasters. LALIGA and Play Anywhere’s Interactive Rights agreement unlocks the possibility for LALIGA’s broadcast partners to deliver interactive, contextual content that drives engagement and boosts ad inventory with minimal integration and at no licensing cost to the broadcaster.”

About Evertz Technologies Ltd.
Evertz Technologies Limited (TSX:ET) designs, manufactures and markets video and audio infrastructure solutions for the television, telecommunications and new-media industries. The Company’s solutions are used by content creators, broadcasters, specialty channels and television service providers to support their increasingly complex multi-channel digital, high & ultra-high definition television (“HDTV” & “UHD”) and next generation high bandwidth low latency IP network environments and by telecommunications and new-media companies. Evertz products allow customers to generate additional revenue while reducing costs through efficient signal routing, distribution, monitoring and management of content, as well as the automation and orchestration of more streamlined and agile workflow processes on-premise and in the “Cloud”. For more information, please visit www.evertz.com

About LALIGA
LALIGA is the largest football ecosystem in the world. It is a private sports association composed of the 20 public limited sports companies (SADs) and clubs of LALIGA EA SPORTS and the 22 of LALIGA HYPERMOTION, and is responsible for organising professional football competitions in Spain. LALIGA has over 220 million followers globally across social networks, on 16 platforms and in 20 different languages. With its headquarters in Madrid (Spain) it has the most extensive international network of any sports property and is present in 34 countries through 11 offices. The organisation carries out its social work through its FOUNDATION and was the world’s first professional football league to establish a league for intellectually challenged footballers: LALIGA GENUINE.

About Play Anywhere:
Play Anywhere, through its unique interactive rights deals and patented clearinghouse platform, enables all media stakeholders to participate in new revenue streams driven by interactivity. By securing interactive rights with leagues and pre-defining revenue splits between each of the stakeholders in the value chain, Play Anywhere enables the rollout of Interactivity to the mass consumer market. Our partners benefit from an improved viewer experience and drive new revenue streams with no up-front or operating costs. For more information about Play Anywhere, visit www.playanywhere.com

About Ease Live:
Ease Live, an Evertz company, is an award-winning interactive graphics platform, powering the largest sports leagues, broadcasters and streaming services worldwide. Every day, the Ease Live Platform distributes digital overlays to millions of end users on web, mobile and connected devices, enabling content owners to deliver audience engagement and targeted interactive content at scale. Ease Live enables the ultimate viewing experience for the next generation viewer across connected devices. For more information about Ease Live, visit www.easelive.tv