When the Bundesliga awarded a split of 20 live games to Mark Goldbridge’s That’s Football and Gary Neville’s The Overlap YouTube channels, it raised a lot of eyebrows across the UK.
UK football is traditionally the domain of TV broadcasts, evident when the Premier League removed Amazon Prime Video as its streaming partner, opting to continue with Sky Sports and TNT Sports in its new broadcast rights deal.
But the Bundesliga views the future of football broadcasting differently.
The Overlap, co-founded by former Manchester United Captain Neville, aired the first of the 20 shared games for the 2025/26 season. The matchsaw Bayern Munich beat RB Leipzig 6-0, and was live streamed on YouTube with no advertisements in between halves, and produced as your standard TV broadcast.
However, this format will most likely change when Goldbridge hosts the next Friday night Bundesliga game. The YouTube football personality has amassed just under 3.5 million subscribers on YouTube across his channels; That’s Football, The United Stand and Mark Goldbridge, primarily due to his live watchalongs of football games.
With a growing fanbase on a popular streaming platform, Vadim Drozdovski, VP Strategy & Growth at WSC Sports told Insider Sport he believes “what we’re seeing is a real shift in how football is consumed, and a glimpse into the future of all sports”.
Garnering Gen Z
The Bundesliga has been on a mission to capture younger demographics both as spectators and engagers of the brand.
In January 2025, the German topflight league partnered with the gaming platform Roblox. Across the winter, it launched the Bundesliga Clubhouse attracting players to engage with five interactive games.
Now, the Bundesliga is looking to YouTube to further grow its younger audience base c, making an unprecedented move to award broadcast rights to YouTube channels, which Drozdovski believes is “natural progression”.
“If younger fans are already spending hours on the platform, bringing the full match experience to them there is just good distribution logic,” he said. “The key will be how the leagues layer engagement, data capture, and monetisation on top, otherwise, it’s just reach without return.”
The decision could prove to be beneficial for the league; according to the YouTube 2025 Index, 84% of Gen-Z have a YouTube account. Furthermore, users 25-34-years-old make up the largest viewing demographic at 21.7%.
With YouTube also being one the most accessible digital video platforms in the world, the Bundesliga can also grow its audiences in untapped markets.
A new shift in sports broadcasting?
This is the first time a European League has handed broadcasting rights to content creators, but content creators have slowly been encroaching on the world of sport in recent years.
More recently, La Liga made a similar move awarding the Gary Linekar hosted ‘The Rest is Football’ podcast highlights rights in July.
In Spain, streamer Ibai Llanos acquired Spanish rights to the 2021 Copa América via Gerard Piqué’s Kosmos and streamed the tournament on Twitch; LaLiga also trialled live distribution on Twitch that same year
In Brazil, YouTube channel – built around influencer Casimiro Miguel with agency LiveMode – has steadily secured top-tier packages, including rights to stream every match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup and coverage of the FIFA Club World Cup.
Furthermore, in the US, leagues have mainly embraced creator participation without handing over the core feed.
The NBA and MLB partner with Playback so accredited creators can host interactive watch-parties for authenticated subscribers, while the NFL has sanctioned creator co-streams around its own broadcasts on Twitch and, this season, YouTube’s “Watch With” creator streams for its first free regular-season game
This emerging trend represents three important factors, according to Drozdovski:
- Fan behavior drives the industry. Gen Z expects content to be personal, instant, and designed for their scrolling habits which mandates properties to seek out new forms of distribution
- Connection is everything. An authentic voice now carries more weight than an established brand.
- The definition of ‘rights holder’ is expanding. Exclusivity and limited distribution is giving way to robust partnerships that enhance leagues’ reach and engagement in the age of a fragmented distribution landscape. This means any channel will additive reach and authentic engagement can become a distribution partner
“This is a shift that’s been long in the making, and it’s only now possible thanks to technologies that, over the past few years, have empowered content creators and rights holders to build diverse, engaged, and segmented audiences,” added Drozdovski.
Younger football fans, particularly Gen Z, are now watching live broadcasts of watchalongs such as on Goldbridge’s channels, as well or instead of traditional live broadcasts of games on TV.
Drozdovski believes football leagues have now had to pay attention to these content creator channels, which has seen the likes of broadcasters such as Sky Sports bringing content creators onto their platforms to increase engagement of digital-native viewers.
“The key has been generating enough content to satisfy the thirst for real-time, personalised experiences”, said Drozdovski. “We’ve now reached a critical mass: those segmented fanbases are large and loyal enough to merit their own “channels,” and the rights that come with them.”
A new norm?
With content creators’ platforms now living alongside established sports broadcasters, and even working collaboratively with them, will this trend continue to grow?
“Will this become the norm? I believe so,” revealed Drozdovski, but not as competitors, rather as collaborators in a joint bid to grow their audiences simultaneously.
“The smartest leagues see creators as collaborators, not competitors”, said Drozdovski. “At the end of the day, as they say in football, it’s about meeting fans where they are, and letting the story of the game travel in every format, on every platform, in real time.”
