Barcelona's women's football team surpassed 1 million followers on Instagram. It is the first women's club team to reach that milestone on Instagram, and it trails only the U.S. women's soccer team, which has 1.1 million Instagram followers. The Spanish club team with the second-biggest following on the platform is Atlético Madrid, with 284,000 followers (AS, 1/21).
The Bundesliga will now be available to airline and cruise line passengers on Sport 24 and Sport 24 Extra. The IMG-owned and operated channels will be showing live coverage of a number of key matches this weekend. Featured on over 700 planes all over the world from Jan. 25-27, the Bundesliga Weekend on Sport 24 will be accompanied by a social media campaign (IMG).
Championship Rugby side Toronto Wolfpack will produce all of the team's games in the U.K. and Canada in '19 after announcing a broadcast agreement at the Rugby Football League season launch. The RFL and Sky Sports agreement was reached for all matches to be available for live publication on Sky Sports platforms in the U.K. Distribution in Canada and around the world is included as part of the deal and will be confirmed over the next few weeks (Toronto Wolfpack).
The Olympic Channel and Claro Sports announced a partnership which began on Tuesday, featuring linear and digital programming across 17 territories in Latin America. The agreement includes programming under the Olympic Channel brand on the Claro Sports channel and the OTT platform Claro video, as well as a digital portal dedicated to the Olympic Channel at Marca Claro. Programming will include year-round coverage of Olympic sports and athletes (Olympic Channel).
The 2019 Dakar Rally drew an average of 640,000 viewers on France Télévisions’ France 4 from Jan. 7-17, which translated to a 2.7% market share. The viewership increased 25% from last year’s edition. The Jan. 16 broadcast drew the largest audience with an average of 820,000 spectators tuning in (L’ÉQUIPE, 1/20).
