Floobs, a Finnish video streaming service, has shifted its focus to niche audiences by starting to work with local community sports associations. The service covered many sports already from the get-go, but now they have made a conscious choice to put all their weight behind the local-community-sports strategy.
The guys behind the service, Kai Lemmetty and Joonas Pekkanen, had played around with the idea already for a while when trying to figure out how the beat the video streaming giants like Qik, Kyte.tv and Flixwagon in their own game. Now the duo has decided to go with something very Finnish: Sports!
Finland is notoriously sports-crazy: Sports has traditionally been the primary way (and many times the only way) to build success stories in the international arena. A tradition that dates back to the post-war years. Traditional or not, what a better way to beat the US video streaming giants than going where they can’t reach. Similarly by working with the amateur associations they can tap into a market that is not interesting enough for the national TV stations. Floobs has already signed many contracts with local sports associations. They have signed up football and floorball association, and planning to expand to table tennis- , skating- and horse riding associations.
The community organizers and local associations are also happy since they now have a forum for those events and games that are too small for the traditional media. They can also take the videos with them to Facebook and to MySpace with a Floobs widget.
A great way to turn what was initially a disadvantage (not located in the eye of the storm in Silicon Valley) to an advantage (going local in your own market).
