The Hotstar Sports Bar
It’s been a long day at work, and there’s a match tonight. It’s your favourite team against that other team. You don’t want to miss this.
Wearing your best fan jerseys, you and your buddies head to the sports bar. The bar is abuzz with sports fans watching the match heat up. You exchange witticisms, taunt opposing fans, and overhear commentary from other tables. You try guessing what happens next. You show off deep knowledge of the sport’s history. Your team wins! You celebrate with plenty of photos.
Welcome to the Hotstar Sports Bar.
Rewind to Watch’NPlay in 2018
Our experiment with live sports started with Watch’NPlay in 2018 — a ball-by-ball play along game that stirred the cricket guru in you.
Before every ball during a live cricket match, you guess its outcome. If you get it right, you win points. Use your points to get cool prizes.
Fast Forward to The Social Feed in 2019
This year, we bring you the Social Feed — or simply, the Feed.
The Feed takes live sports to a whole new level of social by answering this question:
How do we create an immersive live match experience where you feel like you’re watching with your pals?
And then, we built these:
- An emoji stream that captures the audience’s mood
- Watch’NPlay — the ball-by-ball play along game
- See your friends’ comments and reply to them
- A stream of select public comments
- Send and view photos with fun stickers on them
The Interaction Spectrum
Each feature has an “interaction cost”, i.e., the effort it takes to interact with the feature. Sometimes, you’ll want to “spend” more and at other times, you won’t.
Matches have their ups and downs. Sometimes, you’ll be engrossed in the action and will express with simple emoji. During other times, you’ll want to see what your friends are saying, and banter with them.
Exploring the Sports Bar
Yap Away With Friends
Cheer, taunt, and banter with your friends during the match. The feed shows comments from your friends, and lets you reply to them.
If your friends aren’t feeling chatty, you’ll see algorithmically picked top comments from the public.
Cheer For Your Team With Emoji
Emoji cost nothing but a tap. They’re fun and they capture the audience’s mood.
Be a Cricket Guru With Watch’NPlay
We wrote about Watch’NPlay in detail last year. Read here.
The core loop of Watch’NPlay remains largely unchanged. A question comes in, and you answer it. The ball is played, and you get your answer. Get points for correct answers, and redeem prizes.
We made three major changes this time:
- Made it a part of the Feed
- Introduced Rounds
- Gave it four options
In 2018, each match was one long round with levels. As you score points and reach a level, you win the prize linked to that level.
In 2019, we split the match into rounds. Each round has three prizes. To get a prize, you need to score a certain number of points within that round. The round lasts a number of overs (4 overs in a Twenty20 match).
Now, enter a match any time, play for a bit, and return later to play a different round.
Celebrate with Hotshots
Take photos, add fun stickers, and upload them to the feed. Your friends will see them immediately.
We also made cool stickers for every tournament!
Making Sense of the Chatter
Of the 64.4 million people who engaged with the Social Feed in the Indian Premier League:
CSK Ruled the Conversation
In IPL 2019, CSK ruled the Social Feed:
Indians Love India
In the ICC World Cup 2019, patriotic fervour was all around:
Until Next Time
Once the match is over, the buzz dies down and the fans head home. The bar closes its shutters till the next exciting match.
You can catch the Social Feed on these tournaments on Hotstar:
- Team India cricket matches
- Indian Premier League
- Pro Kabaddi League
- Premier League
- Indian Super League
