Supa Strikas wins YouTube Sub-Saharan Africa Creator Award

At the event held in Sandton, Supa Strikas was announced as joint winner in the Comic category.

Richard Morgan-Grenville, Strika Entertainment CEO, says: “Strika and Backbone Studios have worked hard to grow this channel over the past 12 months and we see this award as recognition of that. We are very proud of the diverse global audience that Supa Strikas boasts.”

Super Strikas is part of Backbone Studios’ multichannel network that focuses on producing, marketing, distributing and commercialising online video content primarily through YouTube. The network produces its own content while helping affiliate YouTube creators with product development, channel administration, funding, rights management, commercialisation and marketing in exchange for a percentage of advertising revenue.

“YouTube is a key platform for us in countries like the US and Brazil where we can reach more viewers online than through traditional broadcasters,” says Morgan-Grenville. “We expect to reach 100,000 fans in the next month.”

Dan Calderwood, head of multimedia at Times Media, says of the joint venture with Strika Entertainment: “It is important for us to grow engaged audiences beyond our news content and set up relationships with video creators on these key distributed platforms.”

Episodes of Supa Strikas, which has 95,000 subscribers on YouTube, received 5.5 million views in the past 28 days alone. More than 45 million minutes of the series have been watched during the same period, with an average view time of eight minutes.  Supa Strikas has proved most popular with audiences in Brazil, Poland, Mexico, the UK and South Africa.

“Through our strategic relationship with Backbone Studios we are now offering our clients a way to reach our audiences through compelling storytelling and animation,” says Calderwood.