TNT Sports

TNT Sports (previously BT Sport) is one of the UK’s leading sports broadcasters featuring premium competitions such as UEFA Champions League, Premier League, Rugby Premiership, NBA, MotoGP and many more. TNT’s stated aim is to “put fans at the heart” of every sport they cover – and one of the ways it achieves this is by ensuring that audience questions, comments and opinions are woven into storytelling before, during and after every big event.

Letting the audience drive the story

On TNT Sports’ UEFA Champions League and English Premier League coverage, the broadcaster regularly features audience content from X and WhatsApp – using it to drive the direction of the narrative in the studio. Dizplai’s cloud-based platform makes this easy by providing multiple capabilities in one place:

• Intuitive interface allowing the Producer to set up keyword searches across multiple social and messaging platforms while filtering for content type, language, inappropriate language etc. – making it quicker and easier to find the best audience content
• Beautiful, custom-made, TNT branded graphics to show audience content both as a social wall on the in-studio screen and as overlays
• An optional Presenter Console available on a tablet for the Presenter to see a shortlist of audience comments/questions and trigger their appearance on graphics as and when the Presenter decides – again, ensuring a tight fit between the discussion among pundits in the studio and audience opinion at home

UEFA Champions League Tonight

Premier League – Early Kick Off

Including audience voices in this way allows TNT Sports to live up to its fan-centric approach, creating a more dynamic, inclusive tone and reassuring fans that their opinions are being taken into account.

Unlocking new types of Content

Dizplai’s platform has also allowed TNT Sports to be more flexible in its content approach – allowing them to spin up live coverage of secondary events at short notice. One great example of this is the pop-up livestreams on YouTube that TNT produces around UFC fight weigh-ins. By launching an interactive, talent-led livestream around the weigh-in on Friday afternoon – again, fully involving the YouTube audience – TNT Sports can create an ideal marketing window into the main event on its platforms on Saturday night.

UFC Fight Week – Weigh-in Show

By using Dizplai’s platform to power all the graphics – including fighter weights, polling, audience comments etc. – TNT Sports can make these events happen more quickly and efficiently than with legacy systems.

Answering audience demand

Finally, TNT Sports has also pioneered Watchalongs using Dizplai’s platform – understanding that modern audiences, particularly younger ones, are looking for alternative ways to follow live sports events that engage and entertain in different ways. The Watchalongs are naturally interactive and inclusive and can be enjoyed on a second screen alongside the main broadcast.

The example below is during a recent UFC about – a Watchalong featuring a mixture of comedians and experts providing an alternative commentary and reacting to audience comments and questions as the fight progressed.

UFC Watchalong

The future of sports coverage is fan-centric and TNT Sports are an excellent example of how to use an engagement platform like Dizplai to its fullest extent and drive engagement and audience interactivity across the main broadcast, shoulder programming as well as opening up new ways to reach audiences such as pop-up secondary events and watchalongs/alternate streams.

To see some examples of the Dizplai platform in action on TNT Sports, check out the clip below.

If you’d like to know more about Dizplai’s platform and how we help broadcasters, sports teams, federations and brands turn passive viewers into active communities, get in touch with us below.