Football media platform OneFootball has acquired Dugout, the football media business owned by a number of the worlds top clubs, creating what it claims is the worlds largest owned and operated digital football media business. The terms of the deal were not disclosed but it is expected to complete early next year. 

The acquisition will bring Dugout’s global video expertise, network and distribution, including its network of 110+ premium publishers, to OneFootball, creating a comprehensive content offering that will include live OTT streaming, highlights, behind-the-scenes and archive video content, news, scores and statistics. The content will reach more than 85m monthly active users, globally. 

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.

For brands and advertisers, the companies said that 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.

“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,” said Lucas von Cranach, CEO and founder of OneFootball. “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 worlds biggest football clubs as shareholders is a special occasion and we will be working closely alongside them, and OneFootballs existing shareholders, to create exciting direct-to-consumer opportunities.”