Verizon Media teams with football publisher Dugout for exclusive advertising
Verizon Media has signed a new global partnership with football publisher, Dugout. The deal aims to bring Verizon Media new exclusive advertising packages to market through its sales teams and self-serve DSP, allowing advertisers to reach Dugout’s audience of 60 million unique users of highly engaged football enthusiasts across the globe.
As part of the deal, Yahoo Sports also gains access to Dugout’s ever-growing library of football-related videos brought together from the top leagues’ world-class clubs globally, including Arsenal FC, Chelsea FC, FC Bayern Munich, FC Internazionale Milano, AFC Ajax, FC Barcelona, Flamengo, Real Madrid CF and many more.
This builds on the Yahoo portfolio of up-to-the-minute sports content from partners across the world and brings football fans on Yahoo closer to their favourite club’s official content – both past and present – as they await the re-opening of global leagues.
Dugout works with football clubs, leagues and federations to help repackage, distribute and monetise their video content. Through Dugout’s team of editors, a club’s brand-safe video is repurposed and localised into digestible videos for digital fans across the world. Once published to the club’s Dugout library, the video is distributed across all of Dugout’s owned and operated platforms and embedded network of premium publishers globally, reaching a qualified digital football audience.
Verizon Media’s expertise in digital media will enable brands to reach Dugout’s highly-engaged football fans in premium environments. This new inventory will be enriched as part of its broader proposition of premium owned and operated brands and beyond with its unique, unified Verizon Media Ad Platforms technology. This will allow brands to optimise their campaigns against outcome-based deliverables using the combination of quality ad formats and powerful first party data.
Iván Markman, chief business officer at Verizon Media, said: “This new partnership, driven by our EMEA team, not only brings fantastic quality video content for Yahoo’s football fans globally, but also allows us to connect our advertising customers to millions more football fans around the world. It’s the world’s favourite sport and inspires huge loyalty and engagement on a daily basis, which hasn’t changed in recent times as people catch up on archive content and rewatch their favourite matches. We are looking forward to helping brands reach these audiences in quality premium environments where they can connect and showcase the value their company can bring to these fans.”
Elliot Richardson, chairman at Dugout, said: “This partnership delivers significant value across Dugout’s stakeholders, supporting not only our clubs and fans but publishers, bringing Verizon Media’s global advertising power to our ecosystem. It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity for our stakeholders, supporting international and regional advertisers with highly engaged audiences, working together with our publishers who produce a wealth of premium content and our premium video from the world’s top clubs, and most importantly of course, for the fans, delivering the best experience for them globally.”