Pioneering the use of live data feeds, digital video and social media innovations, Loft designed and delivered a bespoke live event platform to connect millions of people around the world with this exciting annual tournament.
The challenge
The Homeless World Cup Foundation is an organisation that helps homeless people change their lives through football. Each year, it holds a World Cup in a different international city, with national teams consisting of people who have experienced homelessness competing for the honours and demonstrating how grassroots football has helped them towards a better life.
Loft collaborated with The Homeless World Cup Foundation for a decade, designing, building and implementing video streaming and data platforms so that audiences around the world could engage with the tournament, at a time when streaming video technology was still in its infancy.
What we did
When Loft first became involved in the project in 2006, our vision was to change it from a tournament that happened far away in another city into something visible to everybody all over the world. At that time, there were restrictions limiting where, when and how people could stream live video, but the Loft team got web cams up and running. From there we improved the amount and quality of live video as well as other features with each successive tournament up to 2015.
In 2011, we became one of the first application developers to use YouTube’s live streaming facilities, working with telecoms providers in each host city to stream live footage from local masts to YouTube and around the world for anybody to enjoy. The platform we developed not only shared every match live, but also up-to-the second tournament statistics, the backstories of the players and coaches, events around the tournament and the atmosphere and excitement of the host city.
For each Homeless World Cup between 2007 and 2015, Loft Digital had a team on the ground in the host city, collaborating with the organisers and other suppliers to ensure live digital coverage went out globally via the internet.
Why it matters
With Loft as a trusted technology partner, the Homeless World Cup Foundation reached millions of people around the world, who were able to enjoy the event and share it on social media as it happened.
During these years, Loft developed and executed a genuinely unique vision for how technology can drive an organisation forwards at a global scale – a capability we’ve applied for corporations working in a range of sectors.
Let’s talk
Digital innovation is a key area of expertise for Loft. To talk to us about your project get in touch via [email protected].
| Client | Homeless World Cup |
| Project | Website and live online events |
| Sectors | Not-for-profit, Sport |
| Services | Design Development |
“We love working with Loft. They will do what it takes to get the job done. We couldn’t do what we do without them.”
Craig Campbell
CEO, Homeless World Cup
