“We’re on the verge of setting trends.” How Tribuna is building the most tech-driven sports media for Belarusians

The sports out­let «Tri­buna» is active­ly expand­ing its net­work of apps and ser­vices – cut­ting-edge not just for Belarus, but for the entire region.Belarusian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists spoke with Tribuna’s direc­tor, Mak­sim Berazin­s­ki, about how mod­ern tech­nolo­gies are being inte­grat­ed into their jour­nal­is­tic and edi­to­r­i­al work.

Mak­sim Berazin­s­ki, head of Tri­buna. Pho­to cour­tesy of his per­son­al archive

«You can only analyze what you see on TV»

Our con­ver­sa­tion with Mak­sim in an online for­mat is quite a famil­iar thing for jour­nal­ism in recent years. But even the pos­si­bil­i­ty of remote com­mu­ni­ca­tion is absolute­ly insuf­fi­cient to over­come the obsta­cles cre­at­ed by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties for inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists.

— We are extreme­ly lim­it­ed in our options for gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion. This requires effort to come up with what was once very sim­ple.

For exam­ple, when Dinamo Min­sk plays at the Min­sk Are­na. Pre­vi­ous­ly, you could go to the hock­ey game and get a report from there, find the direc­tor, ask ques­tions, and gath­er com­ments. Now, you can only ana­lyze what you see on TV. It’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent approach.

The same goes for insid­er infor­ma­tion. You need to stay in touch with peo­ple who know it, some­how ver­i­fy the infor­ma­tion. But now, the risks of pass­ing some­what exclu­sive infor­ma­tion to peo­ple in Belarus have great­ly increased, and that makes con­tact hard­er. We are look­ing for ways to solve this, but the repres­sion con­tin­ues, the sit­u­a­tion only wors­ens, so it’s still dif­fi­cult.

«We integrate into people’s lives through different parts of our service»

How­ev­er, the tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment of the pub­li­ca­tion is not dri­ven by repres­sion, but by the mere emer­gence of new tech­nolo­gies and oppor­tu­ni­ties, notes Mak­sim Berazin­s­ki. At the same time, work­ing in this direc­tion helps Tri­buna min­i­mize some of the con­se­quences of the cur­rent restric­tions in Belarus.

— Through­out our exis­tence, we’ve always strived to stay ahead of the tech­ni­cal aspects that can help us reach the audi­ence inter­est­ed in sports. Before 2020, we had apps and a wide pres­ence on all the social media plat­forms used by Belaru­sians. We also tried to work on YouTube, because some peo­ple might watch a video, but won’t go search­ing for infor­ma­tion on a web­site. On all the mar­kets we oper­ate in, we have large social media fol­low­ings, says Mak­sim.

At its peak in Belarus (under­stand­ably, after 2020 there were many unsub­scribes), we had about 180,000–190,000 fol­low­ers; in Ukrain­ian net­works, over 3.5 mil­lion; and inter­na­tion­al­ly – more than 15 mil­lion (on Face­book and Insta­gram).

Now, one of the key plat­forms for the pub­li­ca­tion is the app.

— Because we under­stand that peo­ple’s attach­ment to sports is very strong and endur­ing. There’s an Eng­lish say­ing that you can change your wife, but you can’t change your favorite club.

This strong con­nec­tion to sports made us real­ize that peo­ple want to get updates on their favorite clubs in real-time.

The app gives us the chance to do just that, offer­ing more ways to engage with our audi­ence: we can send push noti­fi­ca­tions, cre­ate per­son­al­ized cal­en­dars so read­ers get updates on key events and match­es through­out the sea­son, and devel­op oth­er fea­tures around this. We’re still work­ing on improv­ing these options. Right now, the app also allows read­ers in Belarus to access our con­tent with­out the need for a VPN or oth­er workarounds.

The Tri­buna mobile app on Google Play. Screen­shot

The goal is to keep the app and the web­site sim­i­lar, so users can eas­i­ly switch between them. How­ev­er, the app goes fur­ther by offer­ing more per­son­al­ized fea­tures and addi­tion­al func­tions:

«Our mis­sion is to weave our­selves into peo­ple’s lives through dif­fer­ent parts of the ser­vice. Take the match cal­en­dar, for exam­ple – we want users to sync it with their per­son­al Google Cal­en­dar with just one click. While this isn’t ground­break­ing for sports media, we’re at the point where we’re about to set the trends.»

“When you’ve got a community, that’s real added value”

«Right now, there’s heavy com­pe­ti­tion from Telegram chan­nels that push out infor­ma­tion in a sin­gle feed. This neg­a­tive­ly impacts web­site traf­fic, and that shift in media is already a real­i­ty.»

«So, what are we com­pet­ing with? Sports is one of those nich­es where, apart from news, a huge part of the offer­ing is the sta­tis­ti­cal data­base – things like match sched­ules, tables, goal scor­ers, and stats. It’s hard to present all of that through Telegram. It’s far more con­ve­nient when users can choose their club, time­frame, and oth­er details them­selves. We’re work­ing hard to make our data­base user-friend­ly, because that’s what can pull audi­ences away from Telegram.»

Tri­buna is more than just news—it’s a range of ser­vices that help users stay con­nect­ed to the world of sports. Screen­shot from by.tribuna.com

The media man­ag­er notes that over the years, a lot has been done to find ways of work­ing with infor­ma­tion sources with­in the coun­try, and Tri­buna has learned how to iden­ti­fy top­ics that inter­est peo­ple in Belarus. How­ev­er, one key ele­ment for the out­let has tra­di­tion­al­ly been the com­ments sec­tion, and audi­ence engage­ment has dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly since 2020.

«We always placed a high val­ue on our com­mu­ni­ty. But, unfor­tu­nate­ly, after 2020, with the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of our work, the Belaru­sian ver­sion of Tri­buna now has a lim­it­ed com­mu­ni­ty. This is because it was built around the abil­i­ty to freely com­ment on news and events, share opin­ions, and joke around. That worked because the audi­ence shared a com­mon interest—sport. But now, with the risk of pros­e­cu­tion for com­ments, this aspect has tak­en a hit.»

The solu­tion is still elu­sive. Right now, com­ments are more active on plat­forms that offer greater anonymi­ty, like Tik­Tok or even YouTube, where you can hide your name. On our web­site, though, it’s hard­er to pro­vide that – you can’t com­ment anony­mous­ly, and you have to reg­is­ter.

Before 2020, we’d get 40,000 to 60,000 com­ments a month. A news sto­ry like Mes­si retir­ing would be every­where, even in non-sport­ing media. But when you have a com­mu­ni­ty, it adds extra val­ue to the sto­ry – peo­ple can joke in the com­ments, share their favorite Mes­si moments, or debate which of his goals was the best. It gives them more than just the news.

Dri­ven by its com­mu­ni­ty, Tri­buna decid­ed to intro­duce a paid sub­scrip­tion. Screen­shot: Tribuna.com app

One of the new fea­tures intro­duced about three months ago is paid sub­scrip­tions. Mak­sim explains that, while this fea­ture isn’t high­ly in demand in Belaru­sian real­i­ty, Tri­buna was able to imple­ment it because the mech­a­nism and tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture were ini­tial­ly devel­oped for the Eng­lish-lan­guage ver­sion.

“We’ve had an audi­ence for some time now that want­ed to sup­port us in some way. We’re not expect­ing thou­sands of sub­scrip­tions, because, over­all, pay­ing for con­tent isn’t exact­ly a com­mon thing in our region.”

«People using the app consume 20 times more content»

The apps and ser­vices at Tri­buna are devel­oped by a large team, includ­ing some Belaru­sian devel­op­ers. The tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture for all region­al ver­sions is uni­fied, which actu­al­ly ben­e­fits the Belaru­sian seg­ment:

«Since we’re cre­at­ing this not just for our mar­ket, but for a glob­al audi­ence, we can have a big team and real­ly refine the apps to improve user expe­ri­ence.»

The focus isn’t on the few mil­lion sports fans in Belarus, but on a mas­sive world­wide audi­ence. This is what allows us to build high-tech sports media for Belarus. Oth­er­wise, it wouldn’t make sense—even if we had access to the Belaru­sian adver­tis­ing mar­ket, which we lost in 2020. It would be an expen­sive ven­ture with no return in this mar­ket.»

The Belaru­sian ver­sion of Tri­buna has been live for two years now. Max­im admits that local­iza­tion work is still ongo­ing: their data­base has over 800,000 tags, many of which are names of play­ers, teams, and clubs that can’t be auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­lat­ed. So, a lot of man­u­al work is required.

«Over­all, fans from dif­fer­ent regions are pret­ty sim­i­lar. When match­es hap­pen, peo­ple want stats and details—who made the assist, who scored. Of course, cer­tain con­tent like scan­dals or unex­pect­ed events always sparks inter­est. So, it’s hard to pin­point major dif­fer­ences in pref­er­ences across coun­tries.»

When asked if he him­self fre­quent­ly uses the app, Max­im smiles:

«I’m prob­a­bly not the best exam­ple of a user, since I usu­al­ly check it with the thought: ‘What if there’s some­thing wrong, any bugs or issues?’ I know the guys and girls in the edi­to­r­i­al team use the app not for work, but to get infor­ma­tion. It’s con­ve­nient when you don’t have time to fol­low every match and event but still want to stay updat­ed on what’s hap­pen­ing in dif­fer­ent leagues.»

«We’ve also noticed that some­times, phones are lying on the desks of com­pa­ny direc­tors, and they have our push noti­fi­ca­tions from match­es.»

App users are our hard­core audience—they spend sig­nif­i­cant­ly more time with us than the aver­age web­site user. The stats show: 4–5 page views per unique user on the web­site. In com­par­i­son, some­one using the app con­sumes more than 20 times more con­tent. So, there’s no doubt that the app great­ly increas­es the depth and dura­tion of inter­ac­tion with Tri­buna.

Through the mobile app, fans can fol­low sports news in real-time. Screen­shot: Tribuna.com app

«We’re living in a situation where we have to reinvent the media»

Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence has also made its way into the news­room. Accord­ing to Max­im, it can’t replace edi­tors or jour­nal­ists yet, but it cer­tain­ly helps boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and speed up task exe­cu­tion.

«AI speeds up con­tent trans­la­tion for the Belaru­sian ver­sion. We also use it for design­ing images for social media, which light­ens the load for our design­ers.»

«We’re con­stant­ly think­ing about how we can use AI fur­ther. For instance, auto­mat­ic com­ment trans­la­tion into the reader’s lan­guage could be help­ful. For inter­na­tion­al apps, it would allow an Eng­lish-speak­ing read­er to under­stand what an Ital­ian fan is writ­ing. Even­tu­al­ly, this fea­ture could extend to Belarus as well.»

«These past few years, we’ve been liv­ing in a sit­u­a­tion where we have to rethink what media even looks like. In the UK or the US, the adver­tis­ing mar­ket is still fine, so media out­lets tend to be fair­ly con­ser­v­a­tive. In East­ern Europe, how­ev­er, it’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. We’re now focused on find­ing new ways for the media to sur­vive because adver­tis­ing mon­ey just isn’t enough any­more. We need to come up with some­thing else.»

One of our hypothe­ses is that media which oper­ates like tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion is per­ceived as out­dat­ed. If a per­son can’t inter­act with the infor­ma­tion, it feels like some­thing from the past. For us, it’s cru­cial to build a deep­er lev­el of engage­ment.

Mod­ern tech­nolo­gies are evolv­ing rapid­ly. Take trans­la­tion, for exam­ple: in just the past few years, the time need­ed for local­iza­tion has dras­ti­cal­ly decreased. We’re tempt­ed to use AI to gen­er­ate cer­tain con­tent. We’ll be exper­i­ment­ing with that.

Clear­ly, we need to think in this direc­tion and explore ways to work with AI, opti­miz­ing based on its capa­bil­i­ties. I believe that in the near future, there will be even more ways to inte­grate these tech­nolo­gies.

It’s impor­tant not to shy away from this, or else we risk falling behind our com­peti­tors. Who­ev­er fig­ures out how to use these tools effec­tive­ly will have the upper hand.

Tribuna.com: Journalists in 30 Countries and a 10-Million-Strong Audience

Found­ed in 2010, Tribuna.com Belarus is part of the dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing group Tri­buna, which also oper­ates Tribuna.com Ukraine and the inter­na­tion­al Tribuna.com plat­form in five lan­guages: Eng­lish, Ger­man, French, Span­ish, and Ital­ian.

The web­site of Tribuna.com Belarus was blocked on August 9, 2020, the day of the elec­tions. In 2021, Tribuna.com was declared an extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion, and in 2023, it was offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized as an extrem­ist for­ma­tion. 

The pub­lish­ers, Dzmit­ry Navosha and Mak­sim Berazin­s­ki, along with jour­nal­ist Alexan­der Ivulin, faced crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. Oth­er employ­ees of Tribuna.com, as well as their fam­i­ly mem­bers, were sub­ject­ed to var­i­ous forms of pres­sure. Despite this, Tribuna.com Belarus con­tin­ues its oper­a­tions.

The inter­na­tion­al Tribuna.com project, also found­ed in 2010, now reach­es an audi­ence of over 10 mil­lion unique users, accord­ing to Sim­i­lar­web research. The platform’s main prod­uct is the club-spe­cif­ic apps for top Euro­pean foot­ball clubs: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Liv­er­pool, Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, Chelsea, Arse­nal, Milan, Juven­tus, Inter, Bay­ern Munich, and Borus­sia Dort­mund. The largest audi­ences are found in Ger­many, Italy, the US, Spain, the UK, France, Nige­ria, and South Africa.

Tribuna.com also boasts a large net­work of sports-relat­ed social media com­mu­ni­ties. The total audi­ence across the pub­lish­er’s social media groups exceeds 15 mil­lion fol­low­ers on Face­book and more than 2 mil­lion on Insta­gram.

The edi­to­r­i­al team of the inter­na­tion­al project brings togeth­er over 50 jour­nal­ists based in more than 30 coun­tries.

The devel­op­ment of the inter­na­tion­al project not only improves the Belaru­sian prod­uct but also makes it more high-tech, pro­vid­ing Belaru­sian users with the best ser­vice among sports media plat­forms. The dig­i­tal pub­lish­er’s goal is to remain the lead­ing sports media in Belarus and to reach an audi­ence of 50 mil­lion unique users world­wide.