The global football governing body, FIFA, has announced the launch of its live broadcasting platform, FIFA Plus, for fans.
FIFA Plus will feature documentaries and live matches from around the world in youth, men’s and women’s competitions.
At the platform announcement event, FIFA also revealed that FIFA Plus will source its content from 100 of the 210 FIFA member countries and will broadcast 1,400 preliminary matches each month from these 100 countries.
The platform is expected to stream 40,000 games annually, some of which will be saved for fans who want to re-watch the games.
Among the games saved in the official launch are 11,000 women’s soccer games, more than 2,500 videos consisting of FIFA World Cup games dating back to the 1950s, and a number of FIFA originals.
However, the platform will not broadcast FIFA competitions – such as the Qatar 2022 World Cup – live when they are published. It is also free for all fans and available across all operating systems from PC to smartphones in English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish versions, with Mandarin, Bahasa, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Arabic and Hindi versions. Jun.
However, it was hinted that the platform will require subscriptions from now on and could offer live broadcasts of select FIFA tournaments in the future. “Our focus is 100% on reach, and we cannot achieve our development ambitions and business model if scale is not scaled,” said Charlotte Burr, FIFA Plus Development Lead, at the platform presentation event.
“We’ll be scaling strategically – so we’ll potentially go into gaming, social community and possibly subscribing depending on where this goes and where the industry disruption is going.”
Fans will have access to a lot of personal content about their favorite football players and teams outside of the matches that will be archived by FIFA Plus.
Fans will have access to full documentaries, documentaries, talk shows and shorts, available in 11 languages. Documentaries will tell stories from the grassroots to the national teams and some of the most popular and upcoming players from over 40 countries.
The titles that will be available at the launch of the platform on Tuesday, April 12 include “Ronaldinho: The Happiest Man in the World”, “Captains”, a series that follows six leaders – Luka Modric (Croatia), Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Gabon), Brian Kaltak (Vanuatu) and Andrej Blake (Jamaica), Hassan Maatouk (Lebanon) and Thiago Silva (Brazil) – leading their country through qualification to the 2022 World Cup; and “Croatia: Defining a Nation”, which shows the football culture of Croatia.
There are many other original titles available and there could be more on the way as FIFA is currently exploring options to get professional broadcast channels to create content for the platform.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said: “FIFA Plus represents the next step in our vision to make football truly global and inclusive, and it supports FIFA’s core mission to expand and develop football globally.”
This project represents a cultural shift in the way different types of football fans want to connect with and explore the global game, and it has been a key part of my 2020-2023 vision. It will accelerate the democratization of football and we are happy to share it with the fans.”
