Squawka brings legendary ad agency BBH on board as shareholder
Squawka, a free-to-use web app that launched to coincide with the Euro 2012 football championships, has secured marketing strategy and services from ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty in return for a share of the business.
Squawka is a web-based second screen experience for viewers of live televised sport. It provides fans with unique and highly engaging real-time statistics on the matches & players they are watching. The stats stimulate chat and banter between fans on Squawka’s embedded social platform.
The deal will give Squawka access to BBH offices globally and Zag will aid the Squawka management team in marketing, strategy and business operations. Squawka will work closely with Zag to identify relevant BBH clients to enhance their relationship with football fans online. The partnership is being led by Zag, the ventures division of ad agency BBH.
With offices in London, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, and Mumbai, BBH (who’s client base includes Audi, Barclays, British Airways, Google, Johnnie Walker, Virgin Media and others) recently announced that they were to become wholly owned by Publicis Groupe – one of the world’s largest advertising and media groups.
Having launched in public beta in June 2012, Squawka.com has already attracted advertisers including Domino’s, Gillette and Paddy Power, offering a unique platform to deliver contextual and interactive display ads. More than 10,000 football fans used Squawka during Euro 2012.
In August 2012 the Squawka team announced they were to provide real time data visualisation for the forthcoming English Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Serie A seasons.
Using Squawka, users can compare teams and players in real time, looking at dozens of different match actions. As a web app, Squawka works perfectly on desktop and tablet devices with native mobile apps in the pipeline. Using more than 2.9 million possible on-pitch actions, the service also provides a ground breaking live Player Performance Score, which can be used to compare the performance of players and teams.
Squawka also provide stats and data visualisations for the recently announced Gillette Football Club, a major new partnership between Proctor & Gamble and Google who together have launched a dedicated football channel on YouTube. It will bring HD highlights and news from around the European leagues. The partnership is already live in 35 markets.
Sanjit Atwal, co-founder and CEO of Squawka, had the following to say:
“This partnership represents an important moment for everyone at Squawka, and for our mission to deliver football fans a unique second-screen experience. The BBH team have not only shown a desire to drive Squawka forward today – but also a clear vision of how Squawka can developed globally over the next two years. We are looking forward to driving the business forward together.”
Neil Munn, BBH COO & Zag CEO commented: “BBH only looks to partner with consumer tech businesses that can deliver outstanding success.
Squawka is just such a business – as it offers something really special within the world of social TV and seconds screen companion apps. We think Squawka’s unique stats are worth consuming and they are worth sharing. We predict a lot of football fans will feel the same way and this platform will become a popular part of match days.”
Further info: Contact Rich Leigh, 10 Yetis PR Agency: rich@10yetis.co.uk 01452 348 211
Editor’s Notes
Squawka is a unique TV companion web app set to launch in the UK in June 2012. Squawka will provide football statistics, information and conversation all in one place, offering second screen simplicity. Twitter and Facebook integration will enable users to track the conversation surrounding football matches and players from different leagues all in one place, alongside team news, lines ups, live action and analysis, results and latest in-play odds. It will be completely free to use.
By making use of the dataset from Opta, providers of the most comprehensive football database on the planet, and building on it in completely new and creative ways, Squawka will bring comprehensive player and team statistics, head to head info, heat maps and goal analysis.
On top of that, the unique Squawka ‘Player Performance Ranking’ that has been developed where the team assigns scores to each player based on more than 2.5 million possible in-game actions, as soon as they happen, to offer a user experience and pioneering content portfolio that is second to none.
This one minute long video explains Squawka’s features
