Media company Liberty Global has acquired a stake in London-based digital media company Copa90, which specialises in football content.
The Financial Times newspaper said Liberty has invested £7m (€9.5m/$10.6m), along with venture capital fund e.ventures, for a combined 14 per cent stake in Bigballs Media, Copa90’s parent company.
The contract has an option to invest again in six months and values the business at £50m.
Tom Thirlwall, Bigballs chief executive, said the company has 2.3 million subscribers who watch an average of 37 minutes a week of its football comment shows and in-depth features on fan culture.
“We spent a week with the Brazil football team between two of their matches and our shows got 5.5 million viewers, which is more than the television audience for the games they played,” he said, adding that it was a more effective way to “engage football fans” than paying for more expensive broadcast rights.
Copa90 has previously been sponsored by the likes of Adidas, New Balance and Hyundai. Thirlwall added: “We have a very different production cost model and a lot of content that flows across multiple platforms. And we are talking to the same group of advertisers.”