Intigral, deltatre team for Saudi League coverage

Digital content specialist deltatre has been chosen by Intigral to deliver an online interactive video player for its Saudi League coverage, part of a wider movement that the Italian company characterises as “broadcasters [having] realised that it is not a case of if they should utilise digital media but how best to capitalise on it.”

Based on deltatre’s Diva Football package, Intigral’s broadband coverage will provide users with access to live and on-demand video of matches, synchronised statistics and social media features, all couched within smooth navigation specifically designed for football.

“The player will be localised in Arabic, the Diva player interface will be changed in order to fit the Arabic usability (readability from right to left), and all labels will be translated into Arabic,” explains deltatre’s director of sales and business development, Carlo Lisa. “The ‘arabization’ of the product will require a review of the whole player user interface and of the data overlay’s layout.”

The video source is provided by Intigral, while the football data used for the overlays is provided by a third party.

Interestingly, Lisa says that the Middle East is one of the faster-growing areas of digital consumption, with sports inevitably being a large part of that.

“We’ve found the sports market as a whole is very healthy,” he adds. “We are experiencing significant demand across all of our product lines, especially in the digital media landscape. Since the London Olympic Games, broadcasters have realised that it is not a case of ‘if’ they should utilise digital media but ‘how’ best to capitalise on it. The Olympic Games proved that there is substantial viewer demand for multi-platform offerings with considerable commercial opportunity for broadcasters that want to enhance the traditional TV viewing, and it would be short-sighted not to meet this demand and expand on it. This trend is developing quickly and we see it becoming a realistic scenario for most medium/large scale sports and entertainment events.”