Manchester United is to launch an official YouTube channel after a 13-year absence as it looks to build its brand and commercial income in a deal with the world’s biggest video-sharing site.

Manchester United is the only Premier League team and the only one of the top clubs globally not to create an official channel since YouTube launched in 2005.



The world’s biggest club has relied until now on distributing its pay-TV channel, MUTV, its own online presence and a Facebook page with 72 million followers as the main means of continuing to build, and make money out of, its global fan base.

The lure, however, of YouTube’s 1.3 billion users and a slice of its $11bn (£8bn) in annual revenue has galvanised Manchester United into playing catchup with its rivals.

“Amazingly, even without an official football channel it is the most viewed club in the world on YouTube,” said Tomos Grace, YouTube’s head of sport for Europe, Middle East and Africa. “But one channel that people are looking for is the official Manchester United voice. The plans they have are very exciting. They want to go big.”

YouTube said that since the start of this football season views of Manchester United video content had risen 60% year on year to almost 850m.

The club will have been partly spurred on by its local rival, Manchester City, crowing about being the UK’s biggest club on YouTube with 1.1 million subscribers, though its target will be to surpass the world’s most popular club, Barcelona, which has been on the site since 2006 and has 3.8 million followers.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Football clubs are worried about losing the increasingly hard-to-reach youth market. Photograph: Alex Morton/Getty Images

“The club’s vision is to be the largest and most engaged sports club in the world,” said a Manchester United spokeswoman. “Our presence on platforms such as YouTube will allow us to achieve this vision.”

Despite YouTube’s enormous growth – revenues will more than double from $4.28bn to $10.5bn between 2015 and 2019, according to eMarketer – the deal will not primarily be about making money. For one, YouTube keeps a significant minority share – thought to be up to 45% – of all income.

“The revenues are pretty small compared with income from the sale of TV rights and sponsorship,” says Richard Broughton, an analyst at Ampere. “It is not a brilliant platform to make massive quantities of money if you are already a big brand. It is more about brand building and hitting different demographic groups.”

The name of the game in the increasingly globalised football market is reach, particularly as saturation hits in mature markets such the UK, as seen with the plateauing of Premier League TV rights while growth is coming from abroad.

Clubs are also worried about losing the increasingly hard-to-reach youth market. Young people are not watching as much football via expensive pay-TV packages or buying season tickets in the numbers they once did.

“YouTube will allow us to continue to evolve our demographics, as well as provide us with analytics and insights to feed not only our media and content plans but other cross-club initiatives,” said the spokeswoman.

Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk

YouTube estimates that 18 to 35-year-olds account for 57% of the total time adults spend on the site. Ampere said that 70% of 18 to 24-year-old UK internet users go on YouTube in any given month, compared with 86% in the US and 90% in Brazil.

The UK has the second-highest consumption of football content on YouTube of any country in the world, behind only the US.

“Our YouTube channel has no impact on MUTV or our other social media platforms and they will complement each other,” said the spokeswoman. “Each have their own set of content, a large portion of which will be exclusive to each of the platforms.”