Berlin/London/Nyon, 22 October 2021 – ELEVEN and OneFootball will broadcast live matches and highlights from nine European professional football leagues across the world in a landmark collective deal with The Association of European Professional Leagues (European Leagues).
For the first time ever, European Leagues worked with nine of its members to bundle their broadcast media rights outside their domestic markets. Thanks to the joint initial three-year deal with ELEVEN and OneFootball, football fans around the world will be able to view top-tier matches live and for free from the following professional leagues: Danish Superliga, Icelandic Top Football, Professional Football League of Kazakhstan, Latvian Optibet Virsliga, Northern Ireland Premiership, Norwegian Eliteserien, Polish Ekstraklasa, Slovak Fortuna Liga, Swiss Football League.
This new strategic partnership will allow fans worldwide to view year round “non-stop” free-to-air live action, with matches delivered from both winter and summer leagues including regular UEFA Champions League participants such as FC Copenhagen, BSC Young Boys, and Legia Warsaw. Live matches will be available across select ELEVEN linear channels, and the ElevenSports.com and OneFootball platforms, and will be complemented by shoulder programming, highlight clips, archive material, and editorial.
On top of securing guaranteed international broadcast revenues, for the first time these nine leagues and their clubs will be able to reach their existing passionate fans wherever they are. By showcasing both the elite football talent in their competitions and their highly competitive championships, leagues and clubs will also find new supporters by tapping into the huge audiences across the globe that OneFootball and ELEVEN afford.
The partnership kicks off this weekend with live matches from six leagues, including Professional Football League of Kazakhstan, Northern Ireland Premiership, Norwegian Eliteserien, Polish Ekstraklasa, Slovak Fortuna Liga, and Swiss Football League. The structure of the agreement will allow further members of the European Leagues to easily join the partnership at any time.
Jacco Swart, Managing Director, European Leagues: “It is fantastic to see this international media rights partnership happening between 9 members of our Association and ELEVEN and OneFootball. It represents another innovative example of how we at the European Leagues aim to provide valuable services to our member leagues. We are uniquely positioned to take advantage of opportunities such as these and we will continue to support the development of our members in relation to league business development. I’m excited about how we can leverage both the ELEVEN and OneFootball platforms to amplify the international reach of our member leagues and their clubs. Our intention is for sure to increase the number of participating leagues over time and to keep on exploring new business areas so as to collaborate with the companies we partner with in the most mutually beneficial way and grow the relationship over the long-term.”
Pedro Presa, Chief D2C Officer, ELEVEN Group: “We’re so excited to bring this fantastic offering of top-tier European leagues to our pioneering ElevenSports.Com platform. We want to deliver for fans who were previously unable to watch the teams they love play and we want to give all football lovers the chance to discover new leagues and players. This new deal enables us to deliver on that mission in a big way via OTT, linear distribution, and original content, and we can’t wait to get started.”
Nikolaus von Doetinchem, VP OTT & Media Rights, OneFootball: “OneFootball is thrilled to be part of such a ground-breaking deal, setting a new precedent in the wider football media rights industry. This deal provides obvious benefits to fans around the world who will now have access to a huge range of live action at their fingertips, for free. Partnering with OneFootball gives these nine leagues and their clubs an unprecedented global audience and we are convinced that many other leagues will see the benefits of agreements like this over the course of this season and beyond. We look forward to getting started this weekend.”
About European Leagues:
The European Leagues gather 37 professional football leagues and associations of clubs representing more than 1000 clubs in 30 countries, across Europe. As the common voice of competition organisers at domestic level and professional football club employers at European level, the European Leagues seeks to enhance and protect the competitive balance of professional football competitions within European Football. The European Leagues’ Association works also as a service provider to its member leagues in supporting domestic football in relation to various areas of league business development.
European Leagues Media Contact: communication@europeanleagues.com
About The Eleven Group:
ELEVEN is an award-winning sports and entertainment media group, established in 2015.
ELEVEN’s platforms across Europe and Asia deliver fans the best live premium sport across their linear and digital channels, with a rights portfolio that includes the UEFA Champions League, Premier League, LaLiga, Bundesliga, Serie A, F1, NBA and NFL. In Belgium, ELEVEN holds the domestic and international rights to the Belgian Pro League.
ELEVEN’s global streaming platform www.elevensports.com delivers thousands of hours of niche-premium and longtail live and on-demand sport to fans in over 230 countries around the world.
Following the recent acquisitions of the global streaming platform MyCujoo and the US based sports media and entertainment company Team Whistle, the ELEVEN Group now houses 1,655 distribution channels and 665 million aggregated social media followers, generating more than 4 billion video views each month. The Group owns more than 50 original content formats and distributes over 65,000 live hours of sport each year to audiences globally.
From the world’s biggest sporting events, to the best local sport, to award winning original programming – audiences enjoy a 24/7 offering of live and non-live entertainment across ELEVEN’s global network.
ELEVEN Group Media Contacts:
tom.bennett@elevensports.com
dave.phillips@elevensports.com
About OneFootball:
OneFootball reaches more than 100 million football fans worldwide every month, making it the most popular football media platform for the new generation of football fans. It is the only app with a fully personalised home stream for non-stop news of your favourite club and the only company to offer individual live football matches on a free-to-air and pay-per-view basis on the app. In line with the motto “Football is more than 90 minutes”, OneFootball operates a 24-hour newsroom to provide fans around the world with the most comprehensive content offering around the clock: from stats and live results from more than 200 leagues and competitions worldwide to breaking news, highlight clips, transfer rumours and live streaming. Added to this is the native integration of original content from over 300 independent content creators, clubs, associations, players and broadcasters from the OneFootball network, making over 100,000 more content elements available each month. OneFootball is available in 12 languages and is the highest rated sports app in the world based on millions of App Store and Google Play reviews. Founded twelve years ago, the company is headquartered in Berlin and has offices in London, New York, Mexico City, Singapore, Cairo, Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro.
In December 2020, OneFootball acquired digital media company Dugout. As part of the acquisition, European clubs Arsenal FC, FC Barcelona, FC Bayern Munich, Chelsea FC, Juventus, Liverpool FC, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Olympique Marseille became shareholders in OneFootball. In March 2021, the German Football Association, Borussia Dortmund and Tottenham Hotspur joined as three additional shareholders.
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