In October 2025, YouTuber Zack Nani streamed live on his channel the match between France's under-21 football team and Estonia. The French federation handed the YouTuber matches for which, according to its president, it had found no takers in the spring, and in the autumn the French league's channel wanted them too. According to the federation president, the first broadcast drew three to four times the audience of this team's previous matches.
The LiveModeTV channel showed Portugal's 2026 World Cup matches for free on YouTube. It broadcast 34 matches of the tournament live, including all of Portugal's matches, the semi-finals and the final. The broadcasts were commentated by content creators and former players. In the Czech Republic, the same World Cup was shown by Czech Television and Nova, each showing 50 matches exclusively, all on free-to-air channels.
What rights the YouTuber got from the French federation
Zack Nani has almost a million subscribers on YouTube. The federation gave him all of the under-21 team's matches up to Euro 2027, excluding the final tournament itself, live and exclusively on YouTube and Twitch. It cited the new habits of its young fans and the wider public as the reason for its choice. The broadcasts are free for viewers. The operator Free has also put them on its TV set-top boxes. France's under-21 matches run on Freeboxes on a TV channel that bears the YouTuber's name.
The head of the French professional league's media company asked the federation president for the matches to be simulcast on the league's channel, Ligue 1+. At the same time, he questioned the choice of a YouTuber who had obtained the rights for a sum roughly matching the cost of producing the matches. He had already publicly expressed interest in the under-21 matches on 7 October, before the YouTuber's first broadcast. In an interview with a sports daily, Nani called the league's channel a complement that requires a subscription, and said he was open to a deal. In November 2025, during a morning livestream, he announced that the simulcast talks had failed.
In Portugal, a simulcast could be agreed. The paid sports streaming service DAZN agreed with LiveModeTV in August 2026 that the channel would show one match from every round of the Premier League and the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Champions League for free on YouTube. The same matches remain on DAZN, which holds the rights to all 380 Premier League matches per season. According to Advanced Television, LiveModeTV's free broadcasts are meant to bring casual viewers to a paid DAZN subscription.
Where the audience for a free-to-watch match comes from
Michelle Kadir, who leads YouTube in Northern Europe, wrote in October 2026 after the Cannes television trade fair that watch-alongs and unapologetic fandom are winning with viewers. A watch-along is watching a match together with a creator who commentates on it. According to her, a partisan Moroccan fan stream of the Africa Cup of Nations final had more than 100,000 concurrent viewers and 85,000 comments, more than any Champions League night that season.
One broadcaster sells most of the advertising space in front of its audience in-house, and direct sales on YouTube tripled its CPM, according to Kadir, meaning the price per thousand ad impressions. In a custom brand integration, she said, one live match was broadcast straight from a sponsor's restaurant. She said that of the 300 million views gained by a creator she did not name, who bought live match rights and streamed them for free, 10 million came during the live matches. "Live rights are the anchor, not the whole show," Kadir summed up.
Comments