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FC Bayern Munich has agreed to a global content deal with Yahoo Sports, the fourth such partnership for the club since it opened its U.S. office in Feb. '14.
The deal is scheduled to be announced on Monday. It follows earlier deals for the club with MSN, Univision and Goal.
Editorial and video content from the reigning Bundesliga champions will be syndicated through Yahoo, with a focus on audiences in the U.S., Latin America and Central Europe. Yahoo also will produce and distribute original content about the team for its audience, such as exclusive player interviews and features.
“The goal with our media partnerships is to gain visibility in the market and reach new audiences through the largest sports platforms available,” said Rudolf Vidal, managing director of Bayern Munich’s U.S. office, a N.Y.-based location that has five full-time employees.
Vidal declined to comment on terms of the agreement, but the content will be available across Yahoo’s English-, Spanish- and German-language platforms.
Bayern has previously identified the U.S. and China as core markets for its globalization efforts. The club is taking aim at Central Europe and, in particular, Latin America adds to that int'l push.
“While our primary focus remains the U.S. market, we do keep a close eye on Central and South America, where there is rapidly growing interest in FC Bayern and German soccer, especially since the World Cup in Brazil in the summer of 2014,” Vidal said.
Within the U.S., Vidal said Bayern has seen the number of official fan clubs grow from eight in April '14 to more than 90 across 34 states. He added that the majority of the 1 million social media followers the team has added since Nov. '14 have come from U.S.-specific accounts.
Bayern touts more than 45 million followers across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus and YouTube.
“Media partnerships like Yahoo help us reach and grow our audience, which only serves to increase the value for prospective partners who want to reach our passionate fans on a local and/or global scale,” he said.
Bayern in November added Goodyear as the first U.S. company to its portfolio of 23 global partners.
For Yahoo, the content partnership with Bayern plays into fans’ desire for exclusive and behind-the-scenes content, said Günther Picker, head of editorial, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, at Yahoo.
He said, “Across the world, soccer is one of Yahoo’s most-searched-for topics, and in Europe, soccer regularly generates over half of our page views on Yahoo Sports."
