OneFootball acquires Dugout

OneFootball, the football media platform, has acquired clubs-owned fan platform Dugout.

Dugout said that the acquisition will bring Dugout’s global video expertise, network and distribution to OneFootball, uniting the businesses to create a comprehensive content offering including live OTT streaming, highlights, behind-the-scenes and archive video content, news, scores and statistics.

OneFootball’s shareholders will now include Dugout founding clubs – Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid as well as new shareholder Olympique de Marseille.

OneFootball’s personalized digital experience will be enhanced by Dugout’s suite of products and platforms, including its network of 110-plus publishers, to now reach more than 85 million monthly active users, globally, according to Dugout.

The pair said that for brands and advertisers, aggregating OneFootball’s first party fan data with Dugout’s fan profiling platform, FanPro, will deepen audience understanding and increase targeting options through audience segmentation across the new platforms and global publisher network

The combined offering will give fans access to original content including live and archive footage, breaking news, scores, analysis, insights and features.

Lucas von Cranach, CEO and founder of OneFootball, said:

“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. 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 10 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.”

Elliot Richardson, Chairman of Dugout, said: “Over the past 4 years we have delivered a number of industry transformational initiatives, with a single goal, that through collaboration we can deliver value to Clubs, Publishers, Brands and Fans via our truly unique company. Thanks to the hard work, ambition and commitment of our wonderful team and incredible support from all our shareholders, we have evolved Dugout into a highly influential, successful business, and built deep long-lasting relationships with our partner clubs, federations, leagues, sponsors, advertisers and publishers that is impossible to replicate.

“OneFootball acquiring Dugout brings together two great, complementary businesses with the most talented people in the industry and establishes the world’s largest B2B and B2C football media company. The newly combined business is now in a strong position to accelerate expansion and support our partners through the rapidly changing digital football landscape.

“The entire football ecosystem will benefit from this deal at a time when it is so important for everybody and will help define the future together working with a common purpose.”