Berlin-based football media company OneFootball will be able to bring live games of South Korea’s K League to selected countries.
OneFootball will broadcast live coverage of the K League to users in France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and Brazil as part of the deal with Sportradar – who were appointed to sell the K League’s international rights from 2020 to 2024.
On OneFootball’s app, there will be two or three K League matches available for the remainder of the 2020 season, which will then continue for the entirety of the 2021 season.
“With more than 44 million active users per season globally, OneFootball is the most popular digital media platform for the new generation of football fans,” OneFootball said in a statement.
“This distribution partnership will allow the K League to tap into a vast userbase of young and highly engaged ‘mobile-first’ football enthusiasts in some of OneFootball’s core markets.
“OneFootball will work closely with the K League and Sportradar in developing a bespoke in-app marketing strategy to enhance visibility of the offer and maximize engagement.”
OneFootball specialises in providing live scores, statistics and news from 200 leagues and covers 12 languages as a leading source of news for football fans.
“Our flexible and convenient approach to in-app live streaming in combination with our very engaged userbase of football fanatics, will benefit the K League’s growth in international markets,” Lucas von Cranach, chief executive and founder of OneFootball, said.
Sportradar has previously arranged broadcast deals in countries such as China, Hong Kong and Croatia. They also partnered up with digital platforms including Dugout (in Singapore), 433 (in the Netherlands) and Copa90 (in the UK).
“Partnering with OneFootball who, like us, are leaders in the digital field, is a tremendous opportunity to expand the audience and brand of the K League beyond its current reach of over forty countries, Lutz Tigges, senior director, media rights at Sportradar, said.
“Be it live coverage, highlights or short form clips, visual moving images still capture the raw emotion which is football and to have one of Asia’s best leagues reach a global audience is nothing but a win-win for all of us.”