Sky Sports Viewers’ Verdict

Every boxing fan has an opinion on who won each round – and it doesn’t always align with the official verdict! Imagine if you could see how the TV audience scored each round – in real-time, moments after the bell sounded.

That’s exactly what Sky Sports has been doing successfully since November 2022 – using Dizplai’s end-to-end audience engagement platform to power the Viewers’ Verdict.

Challenge

When Sky first approached Dizplai about the possibility of a viewer scorecard, the goal was two-fold: create a compelling fan-friendly web app allowing audiences to easily and quickly share their opinions. And secondly, fully integrate those opinions via live graphics into live broadcaster, adding a new layer to the story.

Solution

Dizplai and Sky Sports teams collaborated to create and develop the Viewers’ Verdict scorecard, a second screen experience housed within the Sky Sports app.

The scorecard enables viewers to score fights round-by-round, comparing their scores to other participants via a ‘fan total’, and ultimately sharing their cards on social media. Sky’s editorial team can share snap polls during the night, reacting to events and immediately gauging fan feedback.

The interactive scorecard was unveiled for an all-female fight in November 2022 and promoted with a QR code on air, with fans accessing it on their phones inside their Sky Sports app. The viewers’ scores were shown on with a graphic on air, giving the commentators plenty to talk about.

Before the event, fans were also asked to predict who was going to win each fight – and how. Sky Sports’ producers then had instant access to data from the app, aggregated via Dizplai, and integrated into broadcast playout.

From prototype to deployment, Dizplai worked closely with Sky to offer a seamless workflow, covering delivery, data moderation, and feeding live data into both the app and broadcast graphics in real time.

Importantly, all interactions remained within Sky’s app, allowing Sky to control the narrative by opening and closing votes and scoring, and getting key insights via data from the app itself and Sky’s analytics platform.

Results

Viewers’ Verdict drove significant live engagement with the broadcast, with 45,000 fans opening the web app on the first night. Since then, hundreds of thousands of boxing fans have scored fights on Sky Sports.

The scorecard was used to great effect when it showed a discrepancy between the Viewers’ Verdict and the Judges. Countless controversies have been caused due to the subjectivity of scorecards in the sport, and this was used directly as an on-air talking point on the night.

Viewers’ Verdict is a perfect example of how to engage audiences during live sport. As well as enhancing storytelling and giving the broadcast a more dynamic, inclusive tone it also drives business value by driving traffic to digital properties and creating a new way to collect data and user insight.

See how the Viewers’ Verdict worked below: