The Club’s matchday livestream has been recognised as Best Digital Innovation at the 2023 Business of Cricket Awards.
Presented during an event at Gloucestershire’s Seat Unique Stadium, the judging panel highlighted the notable increase in production value and the improvements to viewer engagement as a result.
“The team are delighted with the award.” Northamptonshire’s Senior Media and Communications Executive Alex Berry said.
“It was a pretty major shift for us this year, we made a load of technical changes behind the scenes but also took a new approach to the style of the broadcast as a whole.”
“For those improvements to be recognised in this way is really rewarding and a real driver heading into next year.”
2023 marked the first time all aspects of the stream were controlled in-house, with a dedicated stream commentary team, enhanced cameras, graphics and ways for viewers to get involved.
This was possible thanks to the support of Principal Club Partner Dafabet, allowing for new investment in hardware as well as ensuring the stream remained a viable channel that was free to enjoy for supporters.
“It was interesting looking at the stats through the year, raw data can be really helpful to let you know how things are going and we saw improvements in all of our key metrics.” Berry said.
“Watch time was the big one, on average each viewer spent 70% longer watching the stream compared to last year which is a massive jump.”
This increase in viewership was recognised by the Business of Cricket Award judges who also noted the 36% rise in the number of times the stream was shared with others by viewers.
“This is a great achievement for the Club in year 1 of the new project but as with everything there’s still room for improvement and we’re already working on plans for the 2024 season.”