Ipadio teams up with Sport England and Facebook

[UK] Ipadio has announced that its live phonecasting service – not dissimilar to AudioBoo – will be utilised by a newly launched Facebook app as part of Sport England’s campaign to get more people to play sport in the run up to the London 2012 Olympics.

The new Facebook tool, dubbed ‘Community Sport Hub’, enables sports governing bodies to “engage” with the 20 million plus people who use the social networking site in the UK, and in particular to organise and market grassroots sporting events. Ipadio will be used by the Hub to offer live commentary and other audio experiences, such as opinion pieces and interviews, through the ability to broadcast live from a standard phone over the web or by streaming and/or uploading recordings using ipadio’s iPhone and android apps.

The Sport England and Facebook partnership should give ipadio some nice consumer exposure in the UK, although the company isn’t without success in the enterprise. Last month we reported that ipadio had secured its first blue chip customer, the UK telco Virgin Media which is using the service to improve the communication amongst its field workers.

ipadio started out as a wholly owned subsidiary of digital communication company Nemisys, which provides a live-to-the-web broadcasting platform. In October, however, the company secured additional funding – up to £500,000 – from Sussex Research Limited, the investment vehicle of London-based financier Stewart Newton.