Over the last 10 years, the video industry has changed beyond all recognition. As broadband has become more widely available, and the number of connected devices has exploded, the landscape has changed. 

At Sky, our goal has remained the same: to be at the forefront of innovation, finding new and exciting ways to deliver great content to customers.

In my role as Digital Director, I’ve also been really keen to embrace the opportunities presented by social media. With viewers consuming more and more content across lots of different devices, and with a reach in the hundreds of millions, it makes sense for us deliver more of our content in this way. It’s something that the teams in Sky News and Sky Sports have been really quick to exploit, and the response from consumers has been phenomenal. 

One of the best examples is the work we have been doing with Facebook. We’ve partnered with them on ‘Instant Articles’ enabling us to host articles from news and sports teams on Facebook, as they’d appear on the web. By working with them, we’ve seen more views, more shares, and more interaction. 

Increasingly though, and I’m sure this won’t come as a surprise from a broadcaster, our digital strategy has been geared towards video. We’ve seen an incredible response to some of the videos we’ve uploaded to our own social media channels, with millions of people watching Thierry Henry drop in on a South Wales school, to exclusive access to American cops training with their British counterparts. 

In fact, if you look at just our Sky News, Sky Sports and Soccer AM Facebook pages, we’ve already amassed a total of 14m followers. In the past three months, we’ve seen almost 370 million video views, and in January, Sky News was one of the most watched Facebook video publishers in the world. 

All of which leads us to Facebook Live. In the coming months, across news and sports, we plan on live broadcasting a great deal of content on Facebook Live, providing a unique behind the scenes look at some major sporting events, and breaking news stories. 

We’ve already been experimenting with it, and the results have been impressive. In less than 24 hours since its release, more than 100,000 people viewed Michael Atherton’s exclusive interview with Freddie Flintoff and Kumar Sangakkara at the T20 World Cup. In news, similar numbers watched Mark Stone’s live report on the migrant crisis in Calais. 

The platform works for us because it allows our news and sports teams to connect with the audience in a slightly different way – offering a different perspective, one that might not otherwise be possible in such a fast moving environment. 

This week, we’ll be streaming some exclusive content ahead of Anthony Joshua’s bid for the World title, as well as coverage of the Junior Doctors strike from Sky News. And there will be much more to come.

We look forward to continuing to work with Facebook and other partners to explore the opportunities, and to continue to find exciting ways to reach a whole new audience.