Manchester City Becomes First Premier League Team To Partner With YouTube
Manchester City has become the first Premier League club to sign an official content deal with the video sharing giant, YouTube. The partnership, announced earlier today, will enable the Club to distribute rights-owned or in-house created videos on YouTube, which receives over 3 billion views per day worldwide. Manchester City will also be able to manage the advertising around its own content, which will be uploaded to the site every day.
Back in 2007, the Premier League was a lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit that accused YouTube, and parent company, Google, of copyright infringement. On June 23rd, 2010 the district judge presiding over the case sided with YouTube and granted YouTube summary judgment against Viacom and the Premier League. Today's deal marks the first time a Premier League club has partnered up with the video giant and certain rights management provisions almost certainly cleared the way for this deal to happen.
The first video uploaded at www.youtube.com/mcfcofficial racked up over 500,000 views in three days.
Around 100 videos per month are created by citytv, the Club’s production team, for the official MCFC website www.mcfc.co.uk, which will also be uploaded on to the new YouTube channel.
“Our goal is to deliver a market leading experience for fans and in terms of online video," Richard Ayers, Head of Digital, for Manchester City, said. "That means delivering the great content we make to where the audience is – i.e. on YouTube. This deal is the first move in laying the foundations of our syndication strategy and is part of a series of deals to expand our online capabilities.
“The ability to extend our reach and to increase accessibility to audiences is great, but we’re also looking forward to exploring the differentiating factors of YouTube, like using annotations, making bespoke interactive video and, more than anything else, becoming part of the thriving YouTube community,” Ayers continued.
Jeff Nathenson, Head of Sports Partnerships for YouTube, said that original content will allow the Club to expand its fan base.
“They are proving to be an exciting club both on the pitch as well as in the digital media space," Nathenson added. "We believe this kind of deal will have a global impact, allowing them to reach new fans in new territories with compelling original content."
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