THE CEO’s POV - Review of the Year 2021
As 2021 draws to a close it’s time to reflect on what has been a hugely challenging but massively rewarding year for Joymo.
Despite the ongoing Covid cloud that continues to loom over us all, we have made huge strides across our business that has seen us bring the power and potential of live streaming to more sports and organisations than ever before.
In the last year, Joymo has empowered sport organisers to wake up to the value in their content and streamed more than 20 different sports in 15 different countries.
A huge part of our development has been the focus on building partnerships that bring more great content to our platform. We’ve signed deals with the likes of Hockey Wales, Lancashire and Nottinghamshire County Football Associations, RAF Central Fund, the American Futsal League and many many more.
On top of these content partnerships, we’ve made strategic moves and become the official live streaming partner of a number of key membership bodies including the Sport & Recreation Alliance, the Welsh Sport Association and sport:80. These organisations represent the interests of hundreds of sport governing bodies and provide a direct shop window to Joymo’s proposition to sports organisers of all shapes and sizes.
More recently, Joymo established an exclusive agreement with FilmMyMatch to deliver live streaming, video management and production services. This partnership is all about ensuring we offer our new and existing clients access to high-quality production services at preferential rates. These agreements are vital to delivering our aims of making streaming as easy, accessible and as cost-effective as we possibly can.
In 2021 we’ve streamed over 6000 hours of sport via Joymo Arena. We’ve added a diverse and high-quality mix of events delivered by a host of national governing bodies including the British Weightlifting National Championships, the Norwegian Cheerleading Championships, Welsh Amateur Boxing Championships, Jamaican International netball fixtures, Welsh Badminton, British Taekwondo and US Waterpolo events, to name a few.
2022 will see more events, more sports and more content streamed on Joymo than ever before. With more creators signing up to the platform every day and a string of partnerships in the pipeline we will continue to empower sport at every level of the pyramid.
This year may be winding down, but our tech team continues to move at pace to ensure that content creators have a seamless production flow and fans have a first-class viewing experience. We’ve made hundreds of upgrades this year with some major new platform integrations including the introduction of test event function to check camera and connection quality before going live, a stream quality notifier during live events, the ability to embed a Joymo stream on owned and operated destinations with fully integrated ticket sales capability and the launch of Joymo Connect, enabling creators to use existing camera equipment to stream to their Joymo channel.
We are a technology company at heart and we never stand still. We are constantly looking at ways we can improve our products - meeting the constantly-evolving needs of our creators and viewers is what drives our development. We have so much more to come in 2022.
A highlight of the past year has been the recognition Joymo has received from the sport business and broadcast industries. In 2021, we were nominated at the Sport Industry Awards (Cutting Edge category) and SportsPro OTT Awards (Best Emerging Tech Company), both prestigious events with a stellar list of nominees from across the global sport and streaming industries.
These nominations signify Joymo’s growing stature and is validation that we are providing huge value to governing bodies, leagues, clubs and athletes at all levels and enabling them to make the most of their valuable content and connect with their audiences. We look forward to picking up some silverware in 2022.
I could not be prouder of the collective work of our teams and the ongoing collaboration with our growing list of clients and partners during the last year. Next year will bring more change to sport at every level of competition.
One one hand, it’s never been more challenging to administer and run sports with more red tape, less funding and more competing interests for athletes' attention. The flip side is it’s never been easier or more affordable to keep fans and players engaged by creating and monetising content. We are excited by this opportunity and raring to go as we scale up to deliver our exciting vision for sport in 2022.
We wish all our colleagues, partners, channel owners and viewers a wonderful festive period and happy new year.