Bundesliga club FC Bayern Munich has agreed to a global media partnership with soccer site Goal.com that targets audiences in the United States and China in particular.
The three-year agreement was expected to be announced this week.
Rudolf Vidal, managing director of Bayern Munich LLC, said the content partnership provides Goal.com access to the German club’s players and coaches along with behind-the-scenes content. Bayern, meanwhile, gets editorial and video content surrounding the Bundesliga from Goal.com that it can feature on its own website.
 |
Bayern Munich will get Bundesliga content from Goal.com for its site.
|
It’s a relationship aimed at helping Bayern build its own brand and international fan base, but it also has the club’s league in mind.
“We [will] try to educate the audiences here in the U.S. and in Asia about the Bundesliga, not only about Bayern Munich,” Vidal said. “It will also help growing the Bundesliga.”
Bayern has previously identified the United States and Asia as targets for growth. The club opened an office in New York in 2014 and recently announced it will open a second international outpost in Shanghai.
Goal is owned by Perform Media and operates 37 localized editions in 18 languages, reaching more than 46 million users a month, according to its website. One of those editions is a U.S. edition; there is not currently an edition dedicated to China.
“We have plans for China,” said Martyn Jones, global general manager of Goal.com, though no further details were provided. Until then, he said, Goal’s other editions — including an overarching international edition — will be used for content delivery that could target China.
Jones said that in addition to the content exchange, Goal will help drive e-commerce for Bayern through ads for Bayern’s online store. He said other Perform units could benefit from the deal as well, including Sporting News and sports video-on-demand platform ePlayer, with certain elements being rolled into that service.
“Goal is the central property that we are going to focus on,” Jones said. “But I think in the U.S., there will be certain elements of content that we look at distributing through Sporting News.”
Bayern also has a digital media partnership in the U.S. with MSN.
HJ Mai is assistant managing editor of SportsBusiness Daily Global.
