MUMBAI: LaLiga, Spain’s top-flight football league, which kicked off its new season a few weeks ago, has reached over nine million fans across the Viacom18 network platforms – Sports18, VootSelect and JioTV.
Siddharth Sharma, Head of Content, TV & Digital, Viacom18 Sports, offered the information during a LaLiga media interaction Wednesday on the the 2022-23 season. The ongoing season also marks Viacom18’s second year as LaLiga host broadcaster in India.
Commenting on the same, Sharma noted, “…It will be our endeavour to take the league to a larger fan base across the country through our platforms.”
Sports18’s new campaign for this season, #WhyWatchAnythingElse and the weekly football round-up show, ‘Football Goal’d’ with the superior packaging of LaLiga content have been put together and promise the best experience yet for fans in the country.
Select matches will also be shown live on MTV. With several matches across matchdays featuring special India-focused kick-offs, the season has already grabbed eyeballs of fans in the country.
A season kick-off held here Wednesday also saw attendance from Carlos Santamarina, head of Tata Academy, Atletico de Madrid, who spoke about their plans for the Indian market.
Jose Antonio Cachaza, managing director, LaLiga India, added: “With every new season of LaLiga, we work towards providing even better content and experience than before and we’re ecstatic to see the outcome of our effort in the love and support we get from audiences globally. It has been very rewarding to work with Viacom18 to continually increase accessibility for the existing and potential fan base here.”
With the first of 380 encounters played out on September 12th between CA Osasuna and Sevilla FC at the new-look El Sadar, voted the 2021 World Stadium of the Year by Stadium Database, the big games come thick and fast soon after. The historic Madrid Derby between perennial title-challengers Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid will kick off the season’s derbies this month.
ElClasico, which pits together FC Barcelona and Real Madrid in the most high-profile club match in world football, returns on the weekend of October 15th, while the historic and always entertaining Seville, Barcelona and Basque derbies follow in November, December and January, respectively.
Games such as these are a big factor in the following LaLiga has on social media, with over 160 million fans all over the world engaging with LaLiga content in 20 different languages across 17 different platforms.
But LaLiga is also leading the way in digital outreach for international fans with Play LaLiga, the only self-produced TikTok show by a European league, the creation of the first-ever mini-app on Alipay for Chinese fans, and the launch in Indonesia and Thailand of LaLiga Pass, a self-developed OTT offering all LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank matches for fans on demand, among many other initiatives.
The 2022/23 season kick-off also marks a crucial moment for LaLiga off the pitch. Clubs across LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank are looking to take a giant step forward in their development and growth thanks to Boost LaLiga, a large-scale €2 billion investment project made possible by LaLiga’s agreement with investment fund CVC in December 2021. Clubs are already working across the board on ambitious development plans in areas such as strategy and business, infrastructure, international, brand and product development, digitalisation, and tech innovation, among others.
Meanwhile, LaLiga Tech, the LaLiga subsidiary which offers technological and innovation solutions, continues to expand its business in over 50 countries with companies from multiple sectors including broadcasters, federations and leagues. LaLiga Tech aims to transform the sports and entertainment sector with the design and implementation of OTT services, applications, games, websites, fan engagement, the improvement and protection of content and competition management. World Padel Tour, Millicom, Sky Mexico and MotoGP rights holders Dorna are just some of the organisations who
have already adopted tech solutions developed by LaLiga Tech to digitize their operations.
