Sports are an integral part of culture and history, and every match, game, or race shapes how fans engage with their favorite sport/s that they choose to follow. This is why sports archives are so important. Sports archives are collections of videos, statistics, documents, photographs, and other materials that record key historical moments in sports. It preserves history and has revenue potential. At base, we partnered with Racing Past Media (RPM) to help archive its content from tape to digital and monetize content using a media asset management system. RPM has also partnered with MotorSport Magazine and British Racing Motors (BRM) to help put together clips to create archive videos.
The importance of sports archive
Sports archives are important for so many reasons. This includes preserving significant moments, and personalities in sports history, as well as increasing fan engagement. Everything produced that has low value at the time could have value later. It’s always best to keep what you have in a digitized form.
Preserving sports content is vital for several reasons, as these archives serve as valuable tools for education, strategy, and innovation, providing coaches, players, and fans with insights into the evolution of games. It can be used to create documentaries and the stories captured in sports content hold cultural and economic value. By preserving these memories, we ensure that the legacy of sports continues. This is where we have helped RPM; a company founded by Steve Rider that specializes in capturing, preserving, and promoting content related to motorsports and racing history. It’s important to preserve the assets that RPM has collated because, as already stated, physical tapes will eventually diminish as time passes on. RPM worked with ITV to archive their assets and also partnered with BRM to help them process and digitize 86,000 feet of film dated back to the late 50’s and early 60’s that have never been seen. The archive here is so special because it follows the Formula One team at every Grand Prix race from the 1950s through to 1974. They had a production team attend every event, filming around the pits and capturing behind-the-scenes footage of Graham Hill. This rare content is not available anywhere else in the world, making RPM’s efforts to archive it a vital step in bringing these moments back to life for everyone to enjoy.
Archiving also helps with fan engagement as it offers a gateway to relive historical moments and celebrate different athletes. Providing access to footage can deepen fans’ connection to the sport and their favorite players. It provides a low-cost option for producers and content creators to access material that can be shared with a global audience. It can create nostalgia and introduce younger generations to the rich heritage of sports. This can be done through social media highlights, documentaries, or interactive platforms to create an experience that keeps fans emotionally invested and actively engaged. MotorSport Magazine has digitized its backlog of magazines, and has legacy magazines going back to 1924, which has allowed its audience and racing fans to search for and read the sport’s history. This means that fans can look back and relive those memorable moments.
Racing Past Media also managed to secure media from an old production company. This content was located in the back of a lorry in Guildford where 90 boxes of camera tapes were found with hours of rushes of Lewis Hamilton at the McLaren factory with his father. RPM managed to sell the rally footage onto a website in America. This shows the emotional and financial value of the archive. By digitizing these tapes and archiving this sporting media, all of this footage was recovered.
How to monetize sports archive
MotorSport Magazine monetizes its archives through its YouTube channel, where the videos have been licensed for viewing. Over the past two to three years, its presence on YouTube has led to an increase in the interest in Formula One amongst the younger audience. It has seen a significant number of fans wanting to understand and discover the history of motor racing, where the teams came from, and some of the personalities from the past. MotorSport Magazine has also effectively monetized its sports assets by digitizing its archives and integrating them into videos and uploading those videos on to YouTube. Subscribers can now access the entire archive, which includes all the embedded videos.
We have assisted RPM with monetization as its media library on its website is backed by base. This creates a user-friendly shop window for buyers, simplifying the process for end users. We also provide a centralized storage solution for RPM to store its archive sports assets using a media asset management system. This ensures that the archives are tagged with metadata, making it easy to search instead of spending hours going through footage. This efficiency allows buyers to quickly locate what they need and purchase the archives to be used in documentaries or other forms of video. It streamlines the process for documentary makers, from identifying the material they require from RPM to resolving rights issues, negotiating costs, and managing deliveries.
Conclusion
Sports archives are not just a collection of old footage. They are a living history of games that unite people worldwide. By recognizing the power of these archives, sports organizations can preserve their legacy, engage with fans on a deeper level, and tap into revenue streams. The key to monetizing sports archives lies in identifying how content can be repurposed, licensed, and marketed to existing and new audiences. With the right strategy, sports archives can enrich the sporting world and become a significant source of income.
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