Facebook Unveils a Virtual Sports Stadium

Facebook, on Wednesday, launched “Sports Stadium” which will allow its users to follow games’ proceedings and the commentary surrounding the games.

In its quest to be the heart of communication and social matters, Facebook terms the feature as “a dedicated place to experience sports in real-time with your friends and the world”. Facebook Sports Stadium is a new terminus within the biggest social network in the world that will allow the users to be part of ongoing games, with other friends, right on the platform. It ideally gives the users the feeling of watching the game with other friends even if they are not together.

One game, one place, real time updates

With the new feature, users will be able to view all the Facebook content relating to a particular game as it is happening in real time. This will be tabled in one place, in what will be referred to as the stadium. The user will be able to view posts and comments from friends about the games as well as posts and commentary from game pundits and also get easy access to the experts’ Pages. The game stats, including scores, will also be displayed alongside the channels where the game is available on TV. The user will also be able to comment, like and also share plays.

Sports are notably among the most talked about topics on social media. Facebook claims to be the largest ‘stadium’ around the world with about 650 million sports fans. By the large user engagement, Facebook plans to take advantage of such numbers, especially around major live events.

Twitter is best designed to engage in online conversations during live events via the virtue of chronological appearance of updates and also the 140-character limit in the app. Snapchat’s “Live Stories” feature is also a good tool in covering events. Compared to Snapchat and Twitter’s features, Facebook Sports Stadium will definitely pull a major stunt and create a sports niche in the social networking industry.

Not now for Android and non-Americans

The feature has currently been availed to the iPhone users only in the United States for American football games. Steve Kafka, Facebook’s Product Manager, however has promised that the feature will soon support other global sports, such as soccer, basketball and many others. He also added that the feature will be availed to other platforms later on in the coming weeks.

Sports Stadium isn’t a default feature as at now; the interested people can get to the feature by searching the desired game, however, Kafka has affirmed that the product will be made more visible and accessible on the application as it gets improvements as well as more audience.