YouTube Launches Dedicated Sports Section and Expands CTV

• YouTube is embracing the proliferation of its sports community and launches a dedicated section.
• The video platform has seen a massive yearly growth of 40% in uploads and 65% in consumption.
• Advertisers will also get to access four new big markets through YouTube’s CTV offering.

If you enjoyed sports content on YouTube, you would be excited to learn that the video giant has launched a dedicated section for it, offering an ever wider range of sports content for every corner of the world. At the same time, YouTube expands the CVT offering to help advertisers reach the rapidly growing crowd of sports fans on the platform.

YouTube has shared some stats to underline the growth of sports video viewership in 2020, and it reports a 65% YoY increase, excluding live content. This puts YouTube higher in sports content consumption than cable TV, but it merely comes as a surprise. Also, sports video uploads grew 40% YoY (in hours), so it’s clear that the field has sprung to a new size. For the video platform, creating a dedicated section for sports to nurture and embrace this large audience in the way it deserves makes perfect sense.

The new, dedicated, and personalized destination lies on ‘youtube.com/sports,’ and it should already be available worldwide. TVs will have to wait for a little while longer, though, as it hasn’t landed on that platform yet.

In this new space, users may find videos from the NBA, NFL, LaLiga, MLB, WWE, classic sports, and more. There are entire matches, highlight clips, hand-picked selections, championship games, and many more. Also, athletes themselves are uploading “behind the scenes” or training clips, so YouTube is now serving as an exclusive content platform for sports.

At the same time, the CTV offering that is part of YouTube Select and which was rolled out in the United States is now being expanded to new markets. The expansion covers Australia, Canada, India, and Japan. Still, YouTube promised that a second wave of expansion would occur before the end of the year, covering even more countries/markets. One of the first advertisers to take advantage of the CTV offering, NordicTrack, states that they saw a 91% lift in brand terms and a 4% in awareness.

Of course, when it comes to sports, YouTube is only an emerging platform. A traditional powerhouse is ESPN+, which has the broadcasting rights for a very wide range of sports and can be bundled with Hulu and Disney+ to achieve a very lucrative deal. Also, Kodi could serve as an amazing sports content consumption hub if the right add-ons are used, so don’t forget to check out this guide.