YouTuber Mark Goldbridge among Bundesliga's UK broadcast partners for this season

New York Times

12 hours ago

The Bundesliga has become the first major European football league to award part of its live broadcasting rights in the United Kingdom to a content creator, with That's Football — a channel hosted by the online personality Mark Goldbridge — to show matches this season.
The new agreement is due to be announced today and is expected to be in place for the Bundesliga's first round of games this weekend, starting with Friday night's clash between defending champions Bayern Munich and RB Leipzig at Allianz Arena.
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That game — and all other Friday night fixtures for the next two seasons — will be shown live on the BBC, on both the website and the iPlayer. The Overlap, a British-based YouTube channel with 1.5m subscribers, and Goldbridge's That's Football, which boasts a further 1.38m subscribers, will share those rights, showing 20 live Friday night games in 2025-26 in watch-along formats.
All games will be free-to-air. In addition, the Bundesliga's own YouTube channel will be broadcasting all Friday night games in the Bundesliga and 2.Bundesliga, the second tier of German football, as live.
In August 2025, The Rest is Football, part of the Goalhanger stable of podcasts, became the first UK platform of its kind to secure a highlights package, when it agreed to a three-year deal with La Liga. The Bundesliga's agreement, however, is for a full live broadcast and step further away from traditional broadcasting models.
nobody cared who i was until i put on the ball holder pic.twitter.com/tUeSqNeISe
— That's Football! (@ThatsFootballTV) August 16, 2025
Sky Sports has been the Bundesliga's long-term partner in the UK. Its most recent agreement was signed in 2021 and included exclusive rights for the last four seasons. That deal has now ended, but Sky will retain the rights to the Saturday evening game in Germany, which will include the clashes between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund later in the season.
In a further change, Amazon has acquired the exclusive rights to all of the Bundesliga's Sunday fixtures, which will be available on a pay-per-view basis, adding to a sports portfolio in the UK which includes three Ligue 1 matches per week and one Champions League fixture per round.
But it will be the involvement of the content creators that draws the most attention. The Overlap regularly features ex-players Gary Neville, Roy Keane and Jamie Carragher, as well as debates between fans of Premier League clubs, but has never been a rights holder before. Similarly, while That's Football's growth has depended on its watch-along format, this will be the first time the channel has featured live footage from a major league.
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Sources close to the deal, who have been granted anonymity to protect relationships, have told The Athletic that the agreement for both channels will run until the end of the current season.
Neither The Overlap nor Mark Goldbridge responded to The Athletic's requests for comment.
By Dan Sheldon
Mark Goldbridge, whose real name is Brent Di Cesare, is arguably one of the biggest personalities on YouTube when it comes to football content.
Having gained popularity via his Manchester United-specific channel, The United Stand, which has more than two million subscribers on YouTube, Goldbridge has built a significant following globally.
Although Goldbridge, 46, is a polarising figure and he has as many detractors as he does supporters, the Bundesliga wanting to utilise his platform shouldn't come as a huge surprise.
That's Football, which is another of Goldbridge's YouTube channels, has amassed nearly 1.4million subscribers and, unlike his Manchester United show, focuses more generally on a wide range of football topics.
His last six videos uploaded have been watched more by more than a combined 1.5m people, so the Bundesliga has obviously seen the value in wanting to get their product in as front of as many eyes as possible.
And given Goldbridge has a global reach, coupled with how the current discourse suggests that younger audiences are turning to YouTube for their content, it is a deal that will suit both parties.
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