COPA90 Football Soccer Youtube

Copa90 to start broadcasting live football matches

July 12, 2017

Popular YouTube channel Copa90 has confirmed that they will soon begin broadcasting live football matches in what could be a game changer for the sport.

Copa90 currently boasts 80million video views a month, having traditionally focused on covering action off the pitch via a wealth of social and digital media platforms. But the youth media brand appears to be aiming for an invariably different approach by moving into the broadcast sector.

Head of Copa90, James Kirkham, told The Drum: “Everything we do is the antithesis of the suits sat in a studio ethos; that slowly, slowly build-up and prosaic conversation.

“We’re in the crowd, among the pyros and the flares, in a very visceral way. Why would we stop doing that?”

Copa90 reportedly has three live matches planned before the end of 2017 with games set to be shown on the company’s own platform, ‘Copa90 LIVE’, alongside an additional presence on a major social network.

But Kirkham says Copa90 will not be in competition for large-scale rights such as Premier League fixtures, despite receiving interest from major clubs: “We’re not going in with tonnes of money competing. This isn’t us going, ‘let’s get the war chest out and start outbidding people’.

“We’ve got a couple of big European clubs – and I’m talking elite, A-List European Clubs. The rights at the moment are coming from a whole assortment of different angles. It started off as a trickle and it’s become a bit of a flood.”

The rapid rise of Copa90 highlights a shift towards online platforms as broadcasters such as Sky and BT have endured a decline in viewing figures for football on television.

Sky has responded by introducing price reductions and dropping its numbered sports channels, with Kirkham adamant it should not be assumed viewers will stay in one place for a full 90 minutes.

He said: “The notion of multiple windows, of switching from one platform to another, what we all do on any given day… we have to be hugely respectful of that, not just assume they’re simply going to stay in one place.

“People want their tiny, digestible snack viewing. They want goals as gifs because they’re given to them immediately, they want smartly put together highlights in an instant in places where they can find them. It is just less about the full 90-minute viewing experience as it has been.”

COPA90 Football Soccer Youtube