Mitchelstown-based Wiistream aiming to continue its rapid expansion

Wiistream’s growth has been quick and expansive, and it shows no signs of slowing.

The Mitchelstown company does what it says on the tin, providing OTT streaming solutions (‘over the top’, i.e. non-traditional methods) for sports and entertainment organisations.

It began life as Páirc TV in 2020, quickly gaining the Down and Carlow county boards as clients to stream GAA games, as well as the local Avondhu divisional board. Most recently, Wiistream was announced as one of 13 companies chosen for the Indiana-based Techstars Sport Accelerator programme for 2023.

The outlook of the company has gone international but owners Fionn Herlihy, Pa Magee and Mike Price - all with Gaelic games links to Mitchelstown and Ballygiblin - retain a local focus too and Wiistream intends to tender for Rebel TV, Cork County Board’s new broadcasting service.

While the principals behind the business had often discussed a ‘YouTube for GAA’, it was the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions on attendance at games that was the catalyst for it to progress.

“When there was the need for GAA to be streamed, we were ready,” says finance director Fionn Herlihy.

“We were lucky, we got a break with Down GAA and Carlow GAA which kind of accelerated the whole thing very quickly.

“In the space of a week, we went from doing Avondhu club games in Cork, but we got our platform built in time for the Down GAA championship. We were able to put the games up there, behind a paywall.

“Everything was going out through Páirc TV at that stage but, being an Irish name, we realised that we needed to pivot to target international markets. Down wanted to create their own platform so we pivoted towards providing a white-label service, where we could give every organisation their own front end – basically, their own website sitting on our tech infrastructure and servers.

“We manage everything like a one-stop shop in the back end but every one of our partners would have their own independent branded OTT platform that you can navigate.”

More recent clients include the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) and British Ice Skating and Wiistream plan to hire a chief technology officer in the near future, as well as additional account managers to drive the firm’s strategy. Above all, the ethos of is of a hard-working core of employees.

“We have five local customer-support agents who take care of the in-built live chat and customer support for all our English-speaking events” says chief executive Pa Magee.

“Then, with the WBSC, a lot of our events are focused on Spanish-speaking demographics, so we would have about 10 Spanish speaking agents located in Spain and Argentina.

“The three of us are full-time as well as Gemma, our Marketing Executive, and Kieran who is our customer service manager. Then there are an additional 10-15 people who are part-time.

“Techstars is called an accelerator programme for a reason. They will accelerate the growth of our company and introduce us to investors all around the globe. We have already engaged with investors looking to get involved in our business, which will accelerate our ability to further develop our product and expand our team.

"Techstars will also expand our network significantly, as some of their stakeholders include the Indianapolis Colts, the Indiana Pacers and the NCAA.

“Being a Techstars company will only bring more jobs and so on to Mitchelstown, which is very important for us.”

In addition, a base in Lausanne in Switzerland – the Olympic capital of the world – allows for networking with other potential partners. Canadian rugby league side the Toronto Wolfpack and the Extreme Drivers League are two of the most recent signings. The quest for development is constant.

“We don’t just want to be a streaming company – we want to be a lot more than that,” chairperson Mike Price says.

“The big thing for us is the fan, the person consuming the content. A lot of them are much younger than us and people consume so much now on their mobile devices.

“We want to make it that fans are not just watching an event but engaging with the event. Polls for man of the match, live quizzes, eGaming competitions, etc. The interactive element is the key thing.

"We’d love to partner with more GAA counties and that’s part of our strategy this year. There’s an opportunity coming up the track here locally and we want to put our best foot forward with that.

“For Techstars, there were 13 companies selected out of over a thousand and that’s a massive endorsement for us.

“It’s extremely important for us that we build an international business from Mitchelstown. That’s what we plan to do – hopefully with county boards in Ireland, as that’s where we started, but also with international partners.

“We've streamed over a thousand games to date, with TV-standard productions, these include 12 World Cups and over 20 county finals to 150 countries, which demonstrates the scalability of our technology."