June 4 – Football media giant Footballco has bought YouTube football funnies animation brand and studio 442oons.
442oons will continue as a standalone brand and channel, though Footballco will integrate its content across its other brands, including its two leading football websites, Goal and women’s site, Indivisa.
With over 8m followers across its social channels, 442oons has racked up more than 4 billion views on YouTube alone.
Footballco EVP of content and operations, James Lamon, said: “At Footballco, we cover the game at scale and breadth better than anyone, but with 442oons we saw an opportunity to bring in a brand that offers something new. We were also impressed by the brand’s existing strong following of young fans, especially in the UK and US, who are increasingly seeing YouTube as TV.
442oons generates more than 50 million views a month on all platforms. It joins Footballco’s stable of video-first football brands, which include Goal’s Front Three and FanZone, YallaGOAL, and 1vs1.
Footballco brands generate more than two billion views across all platforms.
Footballco said it will launch new programming from the channel, connecting to more global football fandoms and including women’s football.
At the heart of Footballco’s business is its ad sales. 442oons will be pitched to relevant commercial partners as it seeks to grow the brand’s revenue outside of traditional programmatic pre-roll.
Founder Dean Stobbart said: “I created 442oons to celebrate the funny side of a sport which quite often takes itself a bit too seriously. Even though our content has been viewed billions of times, I’m looking forward to seeing the brand grow as part of Footballco and see it mirror the success of their other video-first brands.”
Footballco also recently acquired women’s soccer brand and influencer platform SoccerGrlProbs.
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