Onefootball Announces Dugout Acquisition
OneFootball has announced its acquisition of Dugout.
The move will see the two online football media platforms combine their services to offer OTT streaming, highlights, behind-the-scenes and archive video content, news, scores and statistics to a large football network of 110 publishers, with a reach of more than 85 million users per month.
As a result of the acquisition, OneFootball’s shareholders will now include Dugout’s founding clubs – Arsenal, FC Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid – as well as new shareholder Marseille.
According to the pair, the deal will see clubs benefit from increased reach and fan insights, while publishers will benefit from access to more professionally produced content, and brands will have access to a deeper audience understanding through the aggregation of OneFootball’s first party data with Dugout’s fan profiling platform, FanPro.
“Since forming OneFootball, our ambition has been to become the ultimate destination for everything football, both on and off the pitch, and our acquisition of Dugout reflects this,” said Lucas von Cranach, CEO and Founder, OneFootball.
“This move will benefit the whole football ecosystem with clubs, federations and leagues able to increase audience reach and harness our powerful data insights to gain a deeper understanding of their fans’ engagement. Our brand and advertising partners will have access to new, contextually-relevant destinations to reach highly engaged football fans on a global scale, with a local approach.
“Welcoming ten of the world’s biggest football clubs as shareholders is a special occasion and we will be working closely alongside them, and OneFootball’s existing shareholders, to create exciting direct-to-consumer opportunities.
“We will continue to provide a fan-first digital experience, with an enhanced content offering that is complete, accessible and flexible.”
According to the pair, the completion of the acquisition is still subject to authorisation, and is envisaged to be completed at the beginning of 2021.
