More than 11,000 people in 122 countries streamed HAN Network’s live video broadcast of the 50th FCIAC Football Championship on Thanksgiving morning.
According to Google Analytics, 11,125 unique viewers tuned in to watch undefeated rivals Darien and New Canaan battle in the Turkey Bowl, which doubled as the Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference championship game for the second year in a row — and third time in history.
“We were thrilled with the size of our local audience, which accounted for 92% of total viewers,” HAN Network CEO Martin V. Hersam said. “But to see so many people from around the world watching — and watching for a long time — just adds to how special a game it really was.”
The FCIAC Championship drew the largest audience for any single live event broadcast on the HAN Network since it launched this past August. More than 10,000 people packed into Stamford’s Boyle Stadium to watch the game. If you add up the online viewers with those who attended the game, that represents more than half the population of Darien and New Canaan.
Post-broadcast analytics show that there were many viewers apparently vacationing in Barbados, Aruba and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“It’s not uncommon for us to have brief pings from random parts of the world for any of our broadcasts, but we pay close attention when someone is engaging with the content for a long period of time,” Hersam said.
“In the United States we had solid audience engagement in 32 states. Our largest number of viewers was in Connecticut obviously. New York, Massachusetts, Florida and California rounded-out the top 5 states with the most viewers.”
HAN Network defines a viewer as a single device logging into the broadcast from a unique IP address.
“We know the actual audience was much larger because we average more than one viewer per device — two or three people watching their web enabled TV for example,” he said. A few viewers sent HAN photos of families gathering around a computer or web-enabled television to watch the game on Thanksgiving morning.
Since launching its new live-streaming and on-demand broadcasting division at the end of August, the HAN Network has reached nearly 400,000 viewers with a daily mix of live news, sports and lifestyle content. During the fall high school sports season, along with one football game each week, HAN streamed live coverage of boys and girls soccer, field hockey and girls volleyball at live.han.network/. Football games drew viewerships of 2,000 to 5,000 and other sports regularly topped 1,000 viewers for live and free on-demand streams.
This winter, the HAN Network will be streaming live broadcasts of Connecticut boys and girls ice hockey, boys and girls basketball, wrestling and more.
“We are thrilled with the rapid progress of our broadcasting efforts. We are building a big and engaged audience that our advertisers want,” Hersam said. “It is only because of the incredibly smart and hard-working staff at HAN that we could come so far so fast.”
The HAN Network, formerly Hersam Acorn Newspapers consists of 13 weekly newspapers, 18 community news and lifestyle websites as well as many other special interest websites. HAN Network also has a content studio which produces native content as well as complete production of commercials for clients as diverse as restaurants and preparatory schools. HAN Network has also launched and event marketing arm aimed at developing niche events in Fairfield and Westchester Counties. HAN Network also owns Trumbull Printing — a 56,000 square foot printing facility. This operation prints HAN Network publications as well as numerous weekly, monthly and quarterly publications around the tri-state area and the Northeast.
Businesses and individuals interested in advertising on the HAN Network should contact Jessica Murren at jmurren@hersamacorn.com or 203-273-7312
To view HAN Network content live or on-demand, visit live.HAN.Network or any of our 18 news websites.