Big names and new partners such as Allianz Deutschland AG, Deutsche Post AG and Telekom Deutschland, with Microsoft support, are on board as founding partners. Green light for the Joint pilot phase with the German Football Association (DFB) and the Bavarian Football Association (BFV).
PM: Green light for sporttotal.tv: strong partners support the _wige MEDIA AG portal
Cologne, 30 January 2017. _wige MEDIA AG has gained support for its new sporttotal.tv amateur sports portal from strong partners and large conglomerates from the German business community: As founding partners, Allianz Deutschland AG, Deutsche Post AG and Telekom Deutschland GmbH will provide support for the company which will in future be streaming sport events with the aid of a special camera technology.
In a joint pilot phase with the German Football Association (DFB) and the Bavarian Football Association (BFV), sporttotal.tv will be broadcasting the second half of the 2017 season games of the North regional league as well as Lower Saxony’s top league and the north and south Bavarian leagues by the second half of the 2017 season live and as video on demand. The aim of the partnership is to raise the public profile of amateur football.
sporttotal.tv gmbh is a wholly-owned subsidiary of _wige MEDIA AG. It equips amateur German clubs with special video technology which enables football games to be broadcast live in a high quality and fully automatically on the new “sporttotal.tv” platform. The use of the offering is free of charge, and the portal finances itself through advertising proceeds.
The founding partners contribute their various core competences to the new company: Allianz will provide its expertise as a long standing partner and insurer of sports in Germany. Deutsche Post will support sporttotal.tv as a logistics partner with its unique network and as an organisation unrivalled in its field.
Telekom Deutschland GmbH will collaborate as a partner for technology and content and support the project in the areas of assembly, connectivity and broadcasting, as well as with a central Microsoft Cloud infrastructure hosted in data centres based in Frankfurt/Main and Magdeburg. Selected live content and highlights will be made accessible to Entertain customers on other Deutsche Telekom platforms.
“We are very happy to be able to present such strong partners across the industry right from the start of the pilot phase and, above all, to know that they are with us on this. The range of different competences will hopefully help our start-up to grow quickly to an authoritative size in the sport media world. Having support from our country’s strongest sport associations is a special honour and a responsibility at the same time – we have come to know them as open, innovative and extremely dedicated,” says Peter Lauterbach, CEO of _wige MEDIA AG and founder of sporttotal.tv gmbh
“This innovative commitment will enable us to attract greater attention to local amateur sports in Germany in which many of our customers, representatives and employees are involved. This serves to underscore our role as a partner and insurer of sports in Germany,” explains Manfred Boschatzke, head of Brand & Sponsoring at Allianz Deutschland AG: “We are making a start with amateur football. Going forward, however, many other types of sport could benefit from the new digital broadcasting.”
Thomas Kipp, EVP Strategy & Business Development at Deutsche Post AG: “Germany’s Post stands for broad-based presence and innovation and, together with the DFB, also for promoting amateur German football. We are delighted to be able to take another a big step forward here, together with strong partners. As experts for logistics and communication, we will help to make sporttotal.tv a success.”
Hagen Rickmann, managing director responsible for the business customers of Telekom Deutschland GmbH: “We are pleased to be an important part of this exciting and innovative project which, together with our long standing and strong partners, will allow us to create the basis for sport enthusiasts in Germany to access exciting sport content free of charge through the Internet anywhere any time.”
The centrepiece of sporttotal.tv is a unique 180° camera technology which is securely installed on the playing field. The outstanding innovation of the system consists of its fully automated software which can follow the game, without a chip in the ball or on the body or shirt of a player.
Spectators can, for instance, use the sporttotal app to direct how they view a game, determine the perspective and share scenes on social media. The streaming offering can be accessed via the sporttotal app as well as through sporttotal.tv, BFV.de and FUSSBALL.DE, the DFB’s platform for amateur football.