Google-owned video sharing platform YouTube has been named as the brand new streaming service for the Ladies’s Tremendous League and Ladies’s Championship.
The Ladies’s Skilled Sport have confirmed the fixtures for the 2024/25 season for the highest two tiers. Sky Sports activities and the BBC are the present rights holders for the WSL and can broadcast 66 of the 132 fixtures between them.
Sky and Now TV will present 44 video games all through the WSL marketing campaign, a rise on the 35 matches within the earlier TV deal. The BBC will air 22 stay video games and at the least 18 of these will probably be on BBC One or BBC Two, whereas all of them will probably be obtainable on iPlayer.
In earlier seasons, the non-broadcast WSL fixtures and choose Championship matches have been proven on the FA’s streaming platform, the FA Participant. Nonetheless, from the beginning of the brand new marketing campaign, this may transition to YouTube with video games set to be streamed globally on every division’s respective channels – Barclays WSL and Barclays WC.
The channels can even home common non-match content material, together with highlights, interviews and entertaining shoulder content material. The FA Participant will proceed to host Adobe Ladies’s FA Cup fixtures and content material.
Nikki Doucet – CEO of the WSL and Championship – mentioned: “It’s a landmark second for us with our transition to YouTube as our streaming service. The FA Participant has been a vastly necessary a part of the expansion of girls’s soccer lately, and the free-to-air attain it has afforded our groups has been essential in our growth.
“Coupled with the high-quality protection offered by our broadcast companions Sky Sports activities and the BBC, watching the ladies’s skilled recreation right here within the UK has by no means been simpler. As we proceed our journey into the NewCo, YouTube will supply much more supporters, each present and future, the chance to get pleasure from our wonderful leagues at a click on of a button.”
The Ladies’s Championship begins on the weekend of seven/8 September and Newcastle United’s go to to the London Metropolis Lionesses will probably be proven on YouTube. Matchday 2 on 14/15 September will see Bristol Metropolis host Birmingham Metropolis, with the match additionally chosen for broadcast on YouTube.
The WSL will then start on the weekend of 21/22 September, with Aston Villa’s go to to Chelsea chosen for broadcast on the BBC, though the precise date and time of that fixture remains to be to be decided. On 22 September, Arsenal host Manchester Metropolis of their opening recreation which will probably be proven on Sky Sports activities because the 12:30pm kick-off.
Matchday 2 sees Chelsea journey to face Crystal Palace on the Friday night time in a night conflict proven on Sky Sports activities. BBC Two will then broadcast Man Metropolis’s recreation towards Brighton on 29 September, as soon as once more within the noon slot.
