The latest attempt to enrich world hockey’s TV offering and boost digital growth has been unveiled as watch.hockey entered a new era on Tuesday.
The International Hockey Federation (FIH) and Endeavor Streaming have inked a five-year strategic partnership to launch a ‘re-imagined version’ of the FIH’s global streaming service.
The FIH said the partnership will create “a global content destination” for hockey fans to access live action from all FIH competitions and other events from the global hockey community, throughout the year. There were no details on cost.
At the 2018 World Cup, details were released for FIH.Live which was supposed to interact more with digital fans, but never took off.
World hockey launched watch.hockey in 2020 after teaming up with Nagra, a global streaming solutions outfit, following a 10-year deal to deliver an online digital service for the sport.
Nagra had hoped to unlock the FIH’s data from the last two decades, as well as hoping to “regain its glory days” when the sport had a higher profile than cricket. That never seemed to materialise.
Watch.hockey was discontinued earlier this season when it was taken offline.
The FIH said in a release that Endeavor Streaming’s Vesper Platform is a complete end-to-end streaming solution that enables teams, leagues, and federations to build upon and deliver highly profitable direct-to-consumer streaming experiences for their fans.
Fans will also be able to watch highlights and historical events from the FIH archive on watch.hockey.
FIH president Tayyab Ikram said: “Developing and promoting the game is at the very top of the FIH mission. In this regard, the new version of our streaming platform, Watch.Hockey, shall play an even bigger role than ever before in enhancing the visibility of hockey worldwide.”
