World football governing body FIFA entered the streaming platform business as it launched a football version of Netflix and Amazon Prime on Tuesday.
The free service will offer live streaming of thousands of football matches as well as archive footage of the World Cup and a library of other material in a variety of languages.
The platform, named Fifa+, will show over 40,000 matches in 2022 including 11,000 women's games, said world football's governing body.
"From launch, 1,400 matches will be live-streamed monthly on FIFA+, rising rapidly," FIFA said.
It is making its entire archive from the men's and women's World Cups available to watch, "totaling more than 2,000 hours."
The platform will also feature statistics, talk shows and documentaries, including a 90-minute documentary about former Brazil star Ronaldinho and Ronaldo.
While increasingly positioning itself as a rival to existing media companies, FIFA+ will also be used by the governing body to promote its sponsors.
"There is no plan to charge a subscription fee for the service, that doesn’t mean to say that we may not evolve over time should there be a value proposition that allows us to charge subscription if we step into premium rights or adopt other kind of models," FIFA director of strategy Charlotte Burr said. "But there will always be a free experience on FIFA+."
Geo-blocking can be used to limit matches broadcast on FIFA+ to specific territories. FIFA was less clear if the platform will be an accessible means of watching World Cup qualifiers that are often not available to view widely as each federation is able to sell the rights and some confederations bundle them together.
The launch could see FIFA shift content off YouTube that it has previously used to broadcast classic matches and sports politics events. The recent FIFA Congress in Qatar was not streamed on the long-standing video-sharing website unlike previously.
FIFA chief commercial officer Kay Madati said "we’re a bit more strategic about what goes where and when.”
The streaming service comes with established platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime already investing heavily in sport-related content.
European football's governing body UEFA launched its own streaming service, Uefa.tv, in 2019.
It offers archive footage as well as match highlights, notably from women's tournaments and youth competitions.
