Cristiano Ronaldo’s official YouTube channel is streaming live coverage of the ongoing Premier Padel P1 finals, in a move the professional padel tournament’s organisers have hailed as an ‘historic world-first moment’.
The Portuguese soccer star’s YouTube channel, which boasts nearly 74 million subscribers, is providing coverage of the semi-finals and finals in more than 130 countries worldwide, complementing Premier Padel’s existing broadcast agreements with the likes of Red Bull TV, BeIN Sports, Canal+, ESPN, Sky Italia, Movistar and Viaplay.
Ronaldo, who has attended padel events and is an investor in the sport, is the most-followed person on social media, with more than a billion followers across his various accounts. He joined YouTube last year, amassing some 50 million subscribers in the space of a week.
According to reports, Ronaldo is not being paid to carry live streams from the event, which is taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and culminates on Monday 17th February. The tournament is the first of 24 Premier Padel events set to take place this year, with the season concluding in Barcelona in December.
This move by Premier Padel is yet another sign of the broader direction of travel in sports content distribution.
For years, top athletes have been touted as media brands and content creators in their own right, with many boasting larger followings and generating better engagement metrics than the teams and leagues they represent. Now, they can be deemed live streaming services, too.
Leveraging the vast reach of Ronaldo’s YouTube channel makes perfect sense for Premier Padel, an upstart property looking to build its profile among new audiences and influence the next generation of players. Who better to help broaden reach and raise awareness than the world’s most-followed sportsperson on social media?
It remains to be seen whether Ronaldo and his team will continue to position themselves as pure content distributors, as opposed to the more traditional YouTube publishers or cocreators, but other rights holders will be taking note as they seek new outlets through which to engage audiences.
Interestingly, as geopolitical observers will note, Premier Padel is backed by Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) while Ronaldo has been a prominent marketing mouthpiece for Saudi Arabia and its various sports investments since signing for Riyadh-based Saudi Pro League club Al-Nassr in 2023.
In recent years Qatar and Saudi Arabia have had a frosty diplomatic relationship, one which spilled over into sports broadcasting when the Saudi-backed pay-TV broadcaster beoutQ began pirating feeds of programming from Qatari broadcaster BeIN Sports in 2017.
More recently, however, relations between the two nations have thawed – and this move is the latest sign of their aligning interests.
Riyadh Season, a public-facing brand tying together various events held in Saudi Arabia, serves as the title sponsor of the Premier Padel P1 tournament, while Ronaldo himself is said to have close personal ties to Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the chairman of both QSI and Premier Padel.