In what has been a difficult season on the pitch for the club, one bright spark has been the success of We Are Ports TV LIVE which provides live coverage of our home games via the Performa Sports streaming platform.

We Are Ports TV LIVE made its debut in August 2020 after being implemented due to the crowd restrictions as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and has went from strength to strength since.

With a team consisting of Matt Gregg on camera, Mark Beattie & Matt Wright being in the producers chair (ably assisted throughout the season by Richard Jameson & Ross Morrison) and Neil Campbell fronting the commentary position with Dave Wiggins, Jonny Dunlop & Mark Beattie supporting, the lads have produced a superb product which has been beamed to TV’s, laptops and phones across the world including all over the UK and as far as the USA, Australia and the UAE as well as into the clubrooms and boardroom at Shamrock Park

A total of 995 live streams were purchased throughout the 21/22 season (an average of 52 streams per match) with our highest viewed game being the Boxing Day+1 Mid-Ulster derby against Glenavon which attracted 136 buys. We also had over 5,000 viewers tune into the live stream, which was free to air on YouTube, of our Promotion/Relegation Playoff second leg against Annagh United.

Our We Are Ports TV highlights have proved hugely popular too with almost 74,000 viewing the highlights over the course of the season with our 3-2 defeat to Linfield in September proving the most popular with 3,800 views.

In total the Portadown FC YouTube channel had over 200k views and 2.1 million impressions from 1 June 2021 to today.

Special credit must go to the team behind We Are Ports TV LIVE, whereby most Irish League Clubs who provide a live stream rely on an outside company to produce the coverage all We Are Ports TV LIVE content is produced in house by the volunteers within the media team – this saves the club a considerable amount of money in relation to paying third party production and equipment costs and means all monies made from We Are Ports TV LIVE is able to be invested back into the media team to improve their content and provide supporters with a better product.

The media team would also like to thank former players like Alfie Stewart, Philip Major, Andy Hunter, Gary McCullough, Neil McCullough, Peter McCann & Brain Gartland, for providing co-commentary during the season as well as to Mark Johnston for his technical help and David Jameson Junior for his work in the erection of the new WE ARE PORTS TV LIVE hub. We also wish to put on record our thanks to We Are Ports for their sponsorship of our highlights and to Performa Sports for their assistance in hosting the live stream on their platform.

Mark Beattie from WE ARE PORTS TV LIVE added

We Are Ports TV LIVE has been a great success in 2021/22, with fans returning to stadiums it was a slight unknown as to whether it would be worthwhile still running the live streams but with all our equipment in place and the experience of a full season streaming behind us we thought it would be only right to give it a go and we have been over the moon with the numbers for each game. To have almost 1k live viewers throughout the season tuning in to our service was more than we would have hoped for and we have managed to turn the service into a profitable end of the club. As well as the 1k viewers on the Live Stream we have has over 10k viewers to our live matches that have been streamed Free-To-Air on Youtube, which have given the club some great exposure and let people see the quality of the stream that we are able to produce.

We have been working hard to push to stream further with additions like live in-game stats, Scores Around the League and other small features that give the viewer more information while being immersed in the game. Massive thanks have to go to the team working hard to producing the stream, Matt Gregg, Jonny Dunlop, Matt Wright, Ross Morrison, Neil Campbell and Richard Jameson have all played a big role in making the service what it is and also to all the Co-Commentators who have made their way to Shamrock Park and added so much to the stream. Also to Performa TV who have hosted our stream online, their hard work and helpfulness have been a big factor in helping us push our service wider.

We hope to grow the service year on year and plan on adding features and making We Are Ports TV Live as good as any club produced stream available.

If any businesses or companies are interested in sponsorship opportunities with We Are Ports TV LIVE or We Are Ports TV – and why wouldn’t you be…we think the numbers speak for themselves! – then please get in contact with Mark Beattie via beats44@hotmail.co.uk / 07851207689 or Jonny Dunlop via jonnydunlop26@sky.com / 07967601941

Portadown Football Club can be followed on YouTube, with all highlights, interview etc available, via https://m.youtube.com/c/WeArePortsTV