2023 Kiswe Year In Review

2023 was a banner year for Team Kiswe! We had the pleasure of continuing our work with some of the most talented and dedicated partners in sports and entertainment and are proud of what we accomplished together this year. 

Highlights:

D2C in the NBA

A few weeks before the start of the 2023-24 National Basketball Association season, we launched Jazz+ and Suns Live, in partnership with the Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns respectively. These first of their kind, direct-to-consumer regional streaming platforms allowed local basketball fans in each market to access live and on-demand games from their favorite teams across any device. These platforms also empowered the Jazz and Suns to take control of the distribution and monetization of their games within the local market after the regional sports network model started to unravel.

Creators Go Big 

This year we strengthened our ongoing partnerships with three of the biggest content creators in the world, Rhett and Link, Smosh, and Try Guys, by powering each of their flagship digital events. In July Rhett and Link announced their third annual Good Mythical Evening event called Pain Or Pleasure. They utilized Kiswe’s polling feature to allow fans to weigh in on whether they wanted to inflict pain or pleasure on Rhett and Link during certain portions of the show. After powering two previous Smosh events earlier in the year, the group returned for their biggest event of 2023 in December. The live funeral/roast served as the finale to the reintroduction story arch of Anthony Padilla, one of Smosh’s founders. Finally, the Try Guys returned in December for their second annual Without A Recipe live event powered by Kiswe. This year fans were not only able to vote on the winner of the cooking competition, but they were also able to use “cursed polls” to dictate things like making the contestants use salt instead of sugar.

Even More Global Concerts

Building on our reputation for livestreaming the biggest concerts in the world, Kiswe continued to connect fans around the world to the artists they love through interactive digital events. 2023 was another big year for K-pop events, powering more than 2 K-pop events a week on average for artists like BLACKPINK, TXT, and ENHYPEN.

Kiswe also continued to support events from artists outside of K-pop. We started the year off big with a never-before-seen Rolling Stones concert. The GRRR Live! virtual concert was streamed to fans around the world to celebrate the release of their new ‘GRRR Live!’ live album and included guest appearances from Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, and The Black Keys among others. Additionally, during the first weekend of December, Kiswe powered the final concerts of two of the world’s biggest artists on successive days. Through our ongoing partnership with InDemand, Kiswe delivered the global broadcast of the last KISS concert ever on PPV.COM live from Madison Square Garden on December 2nd. The first music event hosted across the Kiswe-powered PPV.COM network of mobile and Smart TV apps, this wildly successful event served as the celebration of the band’s legendary 50-year run. The following night, Daddy Yankee, the legendary singer and global sensation, streamed his final concert of the farewell tour, "La Meta," to fans worldwide on a Kiswe-powered, artist-branded website.

Sports Expansion

Kiswe continued to deliver a variety of sports content to both local and national audiences in 2023. In addition to their forays into music, PPV.COM enjoyed another year filled with marquee boxing events like Davis vs. Garcia, Canelo vs. Charlo, and Spence vs. Crawford further expanding its customer base. Kiswe again partnered with the Los Angeles Clippers to help them produce alternative broadcasts of live Clippers games for distribution on their D2C platform, Clippervision. 

Kiswe also expanded its sports portfolio with partnerships with the Detroit Lions, The Rugby Network, and Orlando City FC. Taking advantage of the fact that the production and local distribution of National Football Association preseason games is controlled by the teams, the Detroit Lions partnered with Kiswe to help produce and distribute a first-of-its-kind local, alternative broadcast of the team’s first preseason game of the 2023 season. The Rugby Network partnered with Kiswe to produce, power, and distribute English language alternative broadcast streams of the USA Eagles’ Summer Series tour in Europe. While Orlando City FC created new pre-game show content for the 2023 season.

Results:

These partnerships above only represent a small fraction of Kiswe’s work in 2023. This year Kiswe powered 572 total events, resulting in some pretty eye-popping numbers!

As we look forward to 2024, we wanted to thank our partners for trusting Kiswe with your content. Connecting you to your fans through interactive digital experiences is a responsibility we take seriously. Thank you!

If you’d like to learn more about how Kiswe can help distribute your content in 2024, please fill out the form below.