October 8 – Facebook has expanded its live football output picking up rights to South America’s Copa Libertadores matches in a four-year package from 2019-2022 for its Watch platform.
Facebook will broadcast 46 matches a year, 27 of them exclusively, in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Brazil is the only Conmebol federation to be outside the full package for the confederation’s most important club tournament.
The broadcast of 27 Thursday games will include Brazil and will run through to the quarter finals of the competition.
The remaining 19 games in the package will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and include the final. Facebook will not have those games for Brazil and will share rights with TV channels in other territories.
Dan Reed, Facebook’s Head of Global Sports Partnerships, told AFP: “Sports are important for us for two reasons. For one, our mission is to get people empowered in their community and bring them closer together, and sports does that, especially football across South America, and we have a large sports fans community in Facebook.
“Secondly as we grow Facebook Watch, video is a priority for us and particularly video experiences that are participatory and social.”
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