• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 11, 2014

Throughout Wimbledon this year, fans around the world will know within seconds when Rafael Nada saves match point or Maria Sharapova shows off her reverse forehand.
 
The All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, which runs Wimbledon, has agreed to share near real-time video highlights of the tournament to fans on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.
 
The move represents an ace for the real-time video specialists at Grabyo, which is providing the social video platform necessary for the AELTC to quickly create and distribute video clips across social media channels.
 
“It's a unique project because it’s global and on every platform,” Gareth Capon, CEO at Grabyo, said on Wednesday. “No one has done that before for a major tournament on a free to air basis, on digital and social.”

 “Tennis is very well-suited to bite-size video clips, given the length of rallies and the number of spectacular shots that feature through each game,” Capon noted.
 
The AELTC also plans to distribute longer form highlights from each day on Wimbledon.com and YouTube.
 
Alongside the broadcast coverage, tennis fans are being encouraged to follow Live@Wimbledon -- the AELTC’s live video and radio channel, delivered on Wimbledon.com and its official apps.
 
The clips will are expected to be between 30 seconds and 60 seconds in length, with around 25-50 clips each day being broadcast.
 
The clips will not include ads, according to a Grabyo spokesman, but the opportunity was clearly there. Regarding Wimbledon, he said: “The tournament is the only major that doesn't feature adverts around the courts, so maybe they felt it was inappropriate this time around.”
 
About 72% of Grabyo’s video traffic is mobile, the company recently revealed. It also claims to commonly scale to hundreds of thousands of users within seconds of video clips being available on various social channels.
 
This year, Wimbledon is scheduled to run from June 23 through July 6.