When OneFootball signed the first partnership with Casimiro in 2022, the disclosure treated the streamer as the great star. In the banner of the official announcement there was no mention of Cazétv.
On October 8 of that year, the creator made a live ‘Watch Along’ broadcast of the Bundesliga classic between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.
In the counterpart of collaboration, of Off, offering its base the Atletico single games as principal in the Brazilian Championship for R $ 27.90. These matches were also displayed on the Cazé Twitch.
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Just under three years later, the largest football platform on the planet makes one with Cazétv, now a totally consolidated player in digital media. The reunion confirmed a month ago, in turn, happens in totally different circumstances for the German company.
Since 2020, OneFootball has accelerated its transformation to a multi -product and aggregating platform, while the rights were relegated. Today, 98% of the content of OneFootball is from third parties.
The revelation was made by Yannick Ramcke, General Manager of Ott at OneFootball, during the Retention Zone Live 2025, held in Amsterdam 15 days ago.
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This transition from platform aggregator content editor has allowed OneFootball to connect a large football fans, including products, ticket sales, bets and streaming OTT. It is a model that processes more than a thousand simultaneous SKUS in more than 100 jurisdictions.
To understand how D2C gains a scale and thrives on the economy of signatures and streaming, you need to look at two pillars: distribution (read range) and monetization of content linked to producers and rights holders.
The search for recurring revenue is almost a mantra that moves the business, as Murilo Lima, director of partnerships of of Brazil and Portugal repeated, during the conversation I had with him and Ramcke.
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Together we seek to decipher a complex and robust system that has Brazil as the second largest global market. Size required until US Media hiring to operate the ad machine.
Highlights became value currency
At the end of last year, Onefootball returned the rights of highlights in real time I had negotiated in 2022 with Conmebol. This package with Libertadores, South American and Recopa games allows the screening of goals and throws three minutes after the field. He went through Cazétv.
Flaco López’s great goal to turn the game to Palmeiras against River on Thursday (25), which accumulated more than 109,000 views on the channel less than 12 hours after qualifying, is one of these moments distributed to Brazilian publishers such as CNN, Gazeta and Globo Esporte through the Player of the of.
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“Instead of getting Youtube content, where club and publisher they gain nothing, they prefer to use our solution,” Lima explained.
The format was incorporated into the business from 2020 of Dugout, a video aggregating platform that had more than 110 world clubs as customers. Among them, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, Flamengo and Corinthians.
MLS in the partnership portfolio last year, which also directs the focus to the US, not only to Latin America.
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All are partners of a model that has in the advertising recipe division their main gear.
The advertising engine
With customers like Vevo and Tinder, it arrives in football through OneFootball. The mission is to maximize the advertising revenue that will be distributed among all stakeholders using the platform’s video player. The exact percentages remain confidential.
As Bruno Belardo, the company’s sales VP, puts the new customer with a peculiar ecosystem: the advertiser is not necessarily in the of the OF app, but is on a sports network that connects with multiple publishers.
In Amsterdam, Ramcke stressed the need for a modular and robust technological structure to manage this complexity. The strategy rests on three pillars:
- Modular Integration: Connect various third party services
- CRM Robust: Manage user data with efficiency
- Perfect data transfer: flow between D2C and B2B systems, local payments and partnerships
In addition to the ultra segmentation made possible by this infrastructure, Belardo highlights another trump: the editorial movement promoted by of. Advertising follows the journey of the fan, which starts 24 hours before the games.
Guilherme de Luca, Sales Director of the Americas of/US Media, details how this route becomes an active of value: the app shoots notifications throughout this period, highlighting relevant content about the match.
Only in the pre-game between Palmeiras and River, more than 20 articles related to the confrontation were published in the club.
And the numbers show the adhesion: for every ten users who register in the of, nine accept notifications push. Half of the base already interact with the 24h app that precedes the game, a statistical that jumps to 75% during the transmission.
Reach or attention? The dilemma that redefines the advertising war
By 2025, US Media foresees one, an increase of 35% over the previous year.
In Brazil, OneFootball registers 3 million unique monthly users in the app, a number that jumps to 35 million/month when all platforms (web, CTV and video player).
Lima compares to an exclusive vertical social network for football, designed for the fan, where he finds content only on the topic.
Then the question arises: Does the platform compete directly with Big Techs for the same advertising budget?
“Indirectly, yes. Money is the same and we disputed a slice. But directly, no! When a brand announces in a giant like goal or Google, it’s like throwing a stone in the ocean. Already in a niche like ours, there is no dispersal of attention,” said Belardo.
That is, it is a choice that comes down to wide range and dispersed versus segmented and exclusive attention.
This dilemma between visibility and efficiency is a challenge for global sports properties. The focus of OF is the acquisition of users, and clubs and alloys use the platform as a CRM tool, creating a natural funnel. Once within the ecosystem, the goal is to convert.
One data illustrates the potential: 40% of category sales (tickets, merchandising) occur during matches.
A new model that challenges broadcasters
The closed agreement with Serie A in 2024 to distribute Digital and OTT of the Italian League in the UK and Ireland in partnership with TNT Sports has consolidated itself as a hybrid distribution. The movement reinforces the positioning of OneFootball as a D2C platform that supports rights holders.
Ramcke defines “Home of Serie A” as a branding exercise. This is a product for the “superfan”, operated by the League itself (with all games provided directly), available internationally in parallel to traditional agreements with local broadcasters that broadcast only selected matches.
Other examples in the platform’s channel store include Bundesliga Pass, and AFC Live.
“The concept follows the NBA League Pass model: a non -exclusive product, operated directly by the rights holders.”
Here the clash resurfaces between range and recipe. As Ramcke pointed out, whether it is leagues, clubs or media companies, everyone is now broadcasters content owners with the same challenges: achieve, engage and monetize audience.
In the short term, the goal is to reduce the gap in relation to traditional licensing revenues, using access to identifiable consumer data for complementary business such as Fantasy Sports and Merchandising.
French benchmark
In August, Ligue 1+ was launched with 600,000 subscribers at the opening weekend, priced at € 14.99/month (half of the previous € 29.99 of the Dazn). The service needs 1 million subscribers by the end of the season and 2.5 million by the fourth year to achieve revenue goals.
The Unofficial Partner podcast described the business model as a “difficult battle” as the league combines the challenges of self -display media rights with the difficult economy of streaming OTT.
Among the obstacles pointed out are the absence of a key game on Saturday (transmitted exclusively by Bein Sports) and distribution restrictions such as channel+.
Faced with the European Benchmark, the UP raises questions: which subscriber numbers would represent a “success” replicable by other alloys, and which would configure a “failure” that would remove them from the DTC model (direct-to-consumer)?
In analyzing the role of DTC for leagues and federations in the Onefootball ecosystem, Ramcke positions the platform channels as part of the distribution mix of a broadcaster. That is, a channel with access to the new generation of fans, which reduces discovery barriers, cost and technical complexity.
“Channels are a complement for a Broadcaster to offer a more granular portfolio and capture a larger slice of the consumer demand curve. There is no more ‘unique size’ model.”
DTC: Complement yes, unique bet not
Ramcke sees DTC as a strategic choice that depends on two factors: opportunity cost and real use of customer data.
The first point involves a precise calculation: when rights rates fall (as with Serie A in the UK) or when trying to include their own streaming service without reducing the amount paid by broadcasters (International NBA case). The second requires not only collecting information but having a plan to monetize it.
The DTC is expected to be introduced gradually as a complement to traditional hits, gradually closing the revenue gap and giving more power to rights holders. But there is a warning:
“Adopting DTC exclusively today is probably not a sign of a healthy business.”
It is good to remember that ONEFOOTBALL was one of the first 1,000 App Store applications in 2009, when it started as a media publication company.
The company’s history shows that as sport moves for a data and signature saving, technology is no longer supported and becomes the backbone of the business.
