When we last time wrote about Floobs, a video streaming service, had just shifted its focus to niche audiences. Now they have build a business model to match that.
The company has made deals with the Spanish footbal teams of the highest order. For example Almeria Deportivo along with Real Betisin and Racing Santanderin are using Floobs to stream practice sessions and press announcemets. The rights for the games have of course sold for big bucks to major television channels, but everything that happens outside of those covered by the licenses are free game that Floobs wants to tap into. This means that content will be YouTube like clips that for example a football team can capture for their fans to see. Next markets Floobs is eyeing for football are Italy, Germany and France. Along with the international reach, Floobs serves also many other sports associations and teams in Finland.
The second pillar the service stands on is Music. Floobs works with record labels and managers to create value publish value added content on the artists’ sites. Here’s an example of a Floobs widget on a Finnish heavy band Ensiferum’s MySpace profile and below a picture of their Facebook widget. The Rasmus, a succesful Finnish rock band, has also used Floobs since January. They upload video clips from back stage with mobile phones to a Floobs widget on their home page where the fans can watch it.
Here’s the business: Floobs starts offering widgets on a platform they call WebTV widget. There are roughly two kinds of widgets: 1) You can either embed free widgets to your site, which displays ads from Floobs’ partner ad networks and Floobs keeps the revenue, or 2) you can buy the premium version which does not have ads or you get to share the revenue with Floobs from the ads shown. For the premium version you can also design your own set of logos and banners. The widget program is currently being piloted and will be launched during the summer 2009.
You can get statistics from all the widgets, but with the paid version you can get more detailed figures from widgets in MySpace, Facebook and other third party sites.
