As television moves increasingly to streaming, another player is getting into the game: FIFA. Variety reports that the soccer organization is debuting its own platform to serve as the streaming headquarters of soccer. Currently, the service is free, with 1,400 matches live streamed monthly and a plan for 40,000 live games per year. These are set to include 100 FIFA member associations and 11,000 women’s matches.
Available content includes feature documentaries, docuseries, talk shows, and shorts, as well as more than 2,500 videos dating back to the 1950s of World Cup matches. By the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, the plan is to have every World Cup match ever recorded. Additionally, programming is currently available in English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, and, by June, other languages will be added, including Mandarin, Bahasa, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Arabic, and Hindi.
FIFA+ lead Charlotte Burr shared at a presentation event that “Our 100% focus is on reach, we can’t achieve our development ambitions and our business model if it isn’t extending reach,” also noting that the Qatar games will not stream live: “there is no plan to have premium World Cup live rights on the platform today.” She did, however, note other future aspirations that could transform FIFA+ from something free to a paid model. “We’ll be strategically extending – so we will be potentially going into gaming, social community, and potentially subscription depending on where this goes and where the industry disruption heads.”
FIFA president Gianni Infantino expressed his enthusiasm. “FIFA Plus represents the next step in our vision to make football [soccer] truly global and inclusive, and it underpins FIFA’s core mission of expanding and developing football globally. This project represents a cultural shift in the way different types of football fans want to connect with and explore the global game and has been a fundamental part of my Vision 2020-2023. It will accelerate the democratization of football and we are delighted to share it with fans.”
Titles that are now available include Ronaldinho: The Happiest Man in the World, Captains, and Croatia: Defining a Nation, and originals like HD Cutz, about Sheldon Edwards, a barber to the stars, and Icons, about female game-changers Wendie Renard, Lucy Bronze, Asisat Oshoala, Carli Lloyd and Sam Kerr. Check out FIFA+, which is available globally across all web and mobile devices, here.