Animated (but real!) NHL games, creative marketing for women's sports and betting on scripted wrestling

Each week, we sift through a ton of content and then debate it ad nauseam at FEVO HQ. And since good content, like the mind, is a terrible thing to waste, we are also sharing it here with you, our fans, in the form of this weekly blog post on e-commerce, media and life on the internet.

ESPN: Behind the scenes of the 'Big City Greens Classic'
An in-depth exploration of how last week the NHL partnered with ESPN and Disney to create an animated livestream of a live league game between the Rangers and the Capitals — puck and player tracking data were used to create 3D player animations synced in real-time with the on-ice action, all done in the style of the Emmy-winning children’s show Big City Greens. A fun and inspired move in the league’s quest to reach different audiences (in this case small children) in different ways (in this case as their favorite cartoon characters). Based on the positive reception to the broadcast it stands to reason that we’ll be seeing more of this sort of thing moving forward — one can imagine a near future where games have various options for live viewing much like the NFL does on Monday Nights with the alternative broadcast featuring the Manning brothers.  

Marketing Brew: Leagues and brands are thinking beyond traditional sponsorship and marketing when it comes to women’s sports
Since basically the dawn of professional athletics, women’s sports have — unfairly, problematically and troublingly — often been looked at as somewhat of an afterthought. Thankfully we find ourselves in the midst of a long-overdue sea change, with women’s sports growing globally at an unprecedented rate. With women’s sports catching the attention of more and more fans across the world, more brands are paying attention and bringing about entirely new and innovative ways to advertise and capitalize on the growing enthusiasm.  

CNBC: WWE in talks with state gambling regulators to legalize betting on scripted match results
A much-discussed topic of late in the FEVO Slack. What does this mean for the future of betting? Will every television show soon be listed on the betting apps? While WWE is a certainly complicated new arena for live betting in this country, it isn’t entirely without precedent — after all, you can already bet on things like the Oscars, the length of the national anthem and even who killed Mr. Burns, all of which is information already known by at least a handful of people who work in production. So maybe it isn’t all that much of a change after all?  

And a few more nuggets of assorted internet wisdom …

Rihanna's post-Super Bowl gains are massive (Forbes)

The 10 most innovative companies in advertising of 2023 (Fast Company)

The absurd odds of a perfect NCAA bracket (NCAA)

Podcast: How to turn a crowd into a fanbase (Sports Loft)

How to write a case study that actually closes deals (Animalz)

In a world full of information we need to learn 'critical ignoring' (World Economic Forum)

Image courtesy of the NHL

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