How Applicaster’s helping Russia’s MegaFon bring social TV to the World Cup

Applicaster, a social TV company that provides white label solutions for broadcasters, was recently selected by Russian telecom company MegaFon to offer enhanced Sports viewing experiences on second screens for 2014 World Cup and additional sports tournaments.  The social TV company, based in Israel, has enjoyed tremendous growth around the world, offering the opportunity to enable a connected TV environment. “MegaFon is keen on providing its users with the most engaging mobile experience, via offering fast access as well as interesting and exciting content,” said Andrey Kushnarev, Director of content and media at MegaLabs in the announcement. As the World Cup draws nearer, the global impact of social TV is already being felt. The SMOTRI+ TV app, where the World Cup functionality, “was successfully launched earlier this year, with over 600,000 downloads for the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games and an additional 150,000 active users for the Hockey World Cup.” The “SMOTRI+ functionality has been expanded to support additional features and sports tournaments including the Football World Cup 2014.” We interviewed Sharona Meushar, Applicaster’s Marketing & Media Director about the app for the World Cup. “This is specifically important for Social TV, since this World Cup, which takes place in Brazil, is ‘time zone challenging’ for audiences outside the Americas, and the second screen here offers a great tool to watch together with friends online despite that,” Meushar told Lost Remote. “World Cup predictions talk about 48 percent overall who plan to use their phones to follow the World Cup, second only to TV (63%) when it comes to media channels for keeping up with the game,” she added. “This is based on IAB research which queried sports enthusiasts from 11 markets – Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States – who have smartphones and plan to follow the tournament.”