Asociación de Clubs de Baloncesto partners with WSC Sports to automate highlight creation and engage fans

European basketball league uses WSC Sports’ platform over lockdown

WSC Sports has helped ACB keep fans engaged during lockdown

One of Europe’s top basketball leagues has used technology from WSC Sports to grow its social media following, create new revenue opportunities and engage fans more during lockdown.

Asociación de Clubs de Baloncesto (ACB) is a professional basketball organisation that regulates the Spanish basketball league, known as Liga Endesa, as well as Copa del Rey and Supercopa Endesa competitions throughout the season.

ACB started working with WSC Sports earlier this year, just two months before Spain was locked down. WSC Sports’ platform, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to generate personalised sports videos for every digital platform, has been used to automate highlights for ACB’s 1.1 million social media followers, in addition to allowing the league’s 19 clubs to utilise the platform to automate highlights for their combined 24 million followers.

On how the platform has been of use for ACB during lockdown, Pablo Malo de Molina, head of communications at ACB, told SVG Europe: “It has been very useful. We were able to generate quick and effective highlights from our homes, creating added value to our organisation in a difficult time. We also used that time to work with WSC Sports on graphics and customise our highlights in a way we had never done before.”

“Although we have only been working with WSC for a few months and the pandemic halted all our plans, we definitely see a huge commercial upside here”

Continued de Molina: “We started working with WSC in early 2020 so we barely got only two months of normal usage before the pandemic hit us all. At this point [now] we are mostly focused on using WSC to post quick and good highlights that help us stay close with our fans as they are not in the arena.”

The WSC platform is helping to grow the league’s reach while exposing the unique talent of its players and the high level of its competition to global basketball fans, ACB said. ACB boasts some of the most talented players in the world; last year, 17 of the FIBA World Cup medallists were playing in the ACB, including eight world champions with Spain. Liga Endesa has also been home for some of the biggest world stars: Luka Doncic, Ricky Rubio, Marc Gasol or Kristaps Porzingis were raised in ACB.

“ACB features some of basketball’s most eye-popping highlights on a daily basis”

On the use of the platform by ACB clubs, de Molina said: “When we started talking with WSC Sports we knew we had to get our clubs involved. The tool allows us to send automated content to each club which will help them, but we wanted more, so we worked with WSC so our clubs could get full access to the platform. At this moment a growing number of teams are using the service and we are confident that it will help them and the league as a whole.”

As basketball has slowly returned to Spanish courts behind closed doors, the platform has enabled ACB to engage viewers who were still at home. De Molina explained: “We were one of the few basketball leagues in the world to return and we did so in a bubble environment, without fans in the stands. We understood from the first moment that social media was absolutely key to keep our fans connected, so we went deep with our highlights on all social media platforms.

“WSC Sports helped us and our teams to create quick and unique content and deliver it fast, which was also very important in a tight schedule with three games a day. WSC’s platform definitely helped us to keep our fans close.”

The benefits of this platform, for the ACB and its clubs, are clear, stated de Molina: “We can see a lot of benefits from several angles. In terms of content, it allows us to create quick and good highlights suitable for any platform or format, and to easily combine several plays from the same players or teams. It also allows us to customise and maximise the content we send to our clubs, our partners and even some strategic markets.

“And although we have only been working with WSC for a few months and the pandemic halted all our plans, we definitely see a huge commercial upside here,” he added.

Jose Miguel Calleja, ACB general manager, stated: “It was the right time for us to go one step further in our digital content and this partnership with WSC will definitely help ACB as an organisation and all our clubs to reach fans in a completely different way, and create new commercial opportunities.”

Meanwhile, WSC Sports vice president of partnerships, Yitav Topaz, concluded: “ACB features some of basketball’s most eye-popping highlights on a daily basis. We’re excited to be part of the solution that’s going to expose ACB to more of the world’s basketball fans, providing them with more content than ever before.”