Platform to share passion for sports

After the morning walk, Jabbar Ali was taking rest on a bench. Suddenly Rafiq Khan and Md Bashir stopped near the bench to take rest. They were talking about the 'Banning of Taskin from the next game.' Both of them had made up a story behind it. But only Jabbar Ali knew the reason from 'Pavilion' (pavilion.com.bd) as it does not spread the rumour. It is the sports news firm with playmaker which is an innovative product.

Priyom Mozumdar, co-founder of Pavilion, mentioned that the objective of 'Pavilion' is to create a platform through which the sport enthusiast people of Bangladesh can get the authentic information, data and news related to sports most conveniently as they provide all of them in their mother tongue, Bangla. Moreover, the vision is to create a user based profiling system to track the trends of their users and provide news to build credibility according to their demand and also enable them to showcase their favourite sports stuff.

Pavilion team

Back in February 2014, the team of four-persons-- Priyom Mozumdar, Mostakim Hossain, Fuad Bin Naser, Mohammad Rashed Alam-- started the journey of Pavilion and now the team has expanded to 15 enthusiastic members, who work on Bangla contents for Bangladeshi sports lovers, and talk about sports more often.

Gap in the market

Everyday there are a few matches of football, hockey, basketball, cricket, tennis, badminton, golf, and so on. However, there is only one section for sports in the newspaper, which cannot capture and deliver all the news update. Even there is no dedicated sports channel of Bangladesh like India has Star Sports, Sony Ten.

Priyom added, "Pavilion provides quality sports content like news, feature, video analysis, photo album, score update, blog, fantasy game etc. as per international standard. Users can also contribute by writing blogs to share their experiences, views and opinions."

In this way, Pavilion is actively communicating with the sports followers by creating a news platform to share the passion for sports.

Beyond Priyom Mozumdar's expectations

Even people from the rural areas know about Pavilion which is a great achievement. One of the founders of Pavilion, Priyom Mozumdar, shared his story. He went to Nobabganj, an upazlia of Dhaka disrict the previous year. There he saw that a few students were talking about tennis and badminton on the basis of a news into Facebook. It grabed the attention of Priyom to see what was shared in the news, and he found the writing interesting. When he scrolled to the top to watch the source, he was elated that it was a news of Pavilion and the young generation is following Pavilion for sports news.

Currently, Pavilion is visited by around 2,00,000 sports-lovers everyday. Moreover, the number of readers is increasing as they signed a partnership with Robi and GP.

Pavilion is one of the top 25 most promising tech startups in Bangladesh identified by ICT Division of Bangladesh Government.

Other activities

Pavilion is managing BCB digital footprint, along with the website and digital platforms of Rajshahi Kings as a vendor. Pavilion team plans to manage the Sports PR team, send a reporter to other sports which they already do for cricket matches. By this, they want to deliver the right message to all the viewers.

Pavilion's goals

Currently, Pavilion offers five features: (a) A full-fledged sports portal and community platform, (b) a sports blog, (c) a mobile app, (d) a YouTube channel for visual reviews and analysis, and (e) a content partnership programme through which exclusive contents can be used for commercial purposes. Moreover, Pavilion is showcasing the match highlights (video) and key moments of 'Bangladesh Cricket Series' as well as 'English Premier League' regularly. Pavilions currently included in ‘Free Basics Platform’ of Facebook, which provides Robi and GP users free access to their news and features thinking about rural base people to make Internet access affordable.

Pavilion plans to introduce an interactive feed through a point-based system where users will be given the opportunity for contribution, participation, interaction and appreciation of the content on the website. Further, Pavilion aims to create a tournament management system for both amateur and professional tournaments.

Funds and beliefs

Pavilion believes in changing the way of thinking towards sports by creating a 'Sports Cultured Nation,' which other countries like Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Australia, USA, New Zealand have. So, Pavilion kicked off as a media startup, e-newspaper, and they had to start racing with other media. However, it was not a smooth race. It was a hurdle race, and they had to cross the large conglomerate's media as hurdles. They could only manage angel investors but yet to find venture capital (VC) funding.

Pavilion team started their journey by believing themselves. They did not care any negative remark, and they came to this far for their dedication and patience. They always kept in their mind what Nikos Kazantzakis once said, "In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can."

The writer is currently studying BBA at Bangladesh University of Professionals. He can be reached at [email protected]