At a glance
Clubber TV is a grassroots-focused streaming platform that partners directly with local Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) clubs and county boards across Ireland. While its core audience is based in Ireland and the UK, the platform is rapidly expanding its reach to a growing international viewership. In addition to GAA coverage, Clubber TV also streams Trident Leagues, Champ Rugby games, and more. The service offers both live and on-demand content, with live broadcasts accounting for over 90% of total viewership. Fans can choose between subscription plans or pay-per-view access, providing flexible options to suit different viewing preferences.
To meet the high expectations of live sports audiences, Clubber TV uses Dolby OptiView Player to deliver smooth, high-quality playback across devices. This robust video player ensures consistent performance and a seamless viewing experience, enhancing fan engagement and driving higher viewer satisfaction and retention.
The challenges
Reliability was a critical requirement for Clubber TV from day one. As a platform built around live sports, the stakes are high. Viewers expect seamless playback without buffering, glitches, or downtime. Any disruption during a live match can lead to frustration and loss of trust, especially when users are paying to watch. Clubber TV needed a video player that could consistently deliver stable performance across a wide range of devices and network conditions. Ensuring that every stream worked flawlessly, regardless of device or audience location, was essential to building credibility and retaining viewers.
Another key challenge was development efficiency. With ambitions to reach audiences on web, iOS, Android, and cast to smart TVs, Clubber TV aimed to avoid the complexity and cost of building and maintaining separate native applications. Speed to market was essential, as was the ability to iterate quickly. They needed a video player that worked seamlessly with the Flutter development framework, enabling efficient cross-platform launches without compromising on user experience or playback quality.
The solution
To meet these needs, Clubber TV adopted Dolby OptiView Player, which offers a powerful combination of playback reliability and development efficiency. It enables Clubber TV to reach viewers on web, iOS, Android, and cast to smart TVs, saving time and resources. Dolby OptiView Player ensures consistent, high-quality playback, which is critical for live sports where viewer expectations are high.
“We needed something quick and easy to get ourselves up and running on iOS and Android. Dolby’s player gave us the reliability we were looking for, and Flutter helped us stay efficient without having to build native code for each device.”
– Jimmy Doyle, co-founder of Clubber TV
The results
Increased viewer retention
One of the most immediate outcomes for Clubber TV has been the stability and reliability of playback, which directly impacts viewer retention. With over 90% of content consumed live, smooth and uninterrupted streaming is essential to maintaining viewer satisfaction and trust. By consistently delivering reliable streams cross-platform, Clubber TV has built a reputation for dependable service. This is a key differentiator in the competitive sports streaming space, where technical issues can quickly lead to audience drop-off.
Simplified cross-platform management
Clubber TV has achieved efficiencies across mobile platforms by building its iOS and Android apps with Flutter and integrating Dolby OptiView Player. This setup allows Clubber TV to manage both mobile platforms from a single codebase, while also supporting web playback and casting to smart TVs through Dolby OptiView Player. The result is a significant reduction in development time and operational overhead, enabling faster iterations and freeing up resources to focus on content expansion and user experience improvements.
Data insights for strategic decisions
Last but not least, Clubber TV is now better positioned to make data-informed decisions about its content strategy, thanks to deeper analytics capabilities and close collaboration with the Dolby OptiView team. By gaining insights into viewer behavior, such as which sports content is more popular for their viewers, the team can align content acquisition with audience demand. The Dolby OptiView team provided end-to-end advisory on video workflow, helping Clubber TV unlock these insights and resolve challenges quickly. As the platform prepares to expand into new markets and smart TV platforms, this combination of actionable data and expert support is proving essential to shaping its next phase of growth.
