ipadio and Sport England Bring Community Sports Hub to Facebook

More great news from companies who've taken part in the Digital Mission series, with an announcement from live phonecasting service ipadio, who recently returned from the Digital Mission to New York.

ipadio have joined forces with Sport England and Facebook  to encourage more young people to get involved with sport with the announcement of the Community Sports Hub.

The initiative will produce a beefed-up fan page on the social network which will integrate with ipadio's phone-to-web technology to encourage participation. Facebook are putting up in-kind advertising valued at £5m/year until 2013.

Facebook users will be able to challenge other people in their area to a sporting tryst, this could be a judo match, squash showdown or a 100m sprint. As is the way with Facebook, users will then be able to share the  news (good or bad) with their network.

The potential of the partnership is massive; sports governing bodies will have grass roots access to over 20 million UK Facebook users. 

ipadio's role in all this will be to deliver live commentary, opinion, interviews and a rich media experience directly into the Hub. Users will be able to broadcast live from any phone and upload clips and steam content via iPhone and Android applications.

The technology was showcased by ipadio founder, Dr Mark Smith and official Digital Mission blogger, Benjamin Ellis on the recent Digital Mission to New York.

[Ed - Applications for the Digital Mission to South by South West close, this Fri (4th Dec), for any companies interested in understanding and expanding to the USA]

Picture courtesy of Sport England. All rights reserved.