FIFA has launched a “plus” service with a surprising feature: no attached dollar sign. FIFA+, a new streaming service announced by the Zurich-based soccer association Tuesday, is free to view online.
The new ad-supported service, available on the web without a sign-in as well as in Android and iOS apps, combines live coverage of some matches and features like “The Happiest Man in the World,” a documentary about Brazilian soccer great Ronaldinho.
“FIFA+ represents the next step in our vision to make football truly global and inclusive, and it underpins FIFA’s core mission of expanding and developing football globally,” FIFA’s announcement quotes association president Gianni Infantino.
FIFA+ is available in English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, with six more languages, unspecified in the FIFA release, coming by June.
Soccer fans probably won’t be able to cut any subscriptions from their budgets, with FIFA+ not displacing existing streaming deals. But it will provide more exposure to leagues with lower profiles, streaming 1,400 matches live a month. This week’s live lineup, for example, features matches from Denmark’s Superliga, Latvia’s Optibet Virslīga and Mongolia’s Premier League.
FIFA+ will not cover live streaming of matches from this fall’s World Cup in Qatar, Fox Sports and Telemundo having locked in rights to the World Cup through 2026. But fans will be able to catch up on past competitions, with FIFA’s release touting the eventual inclusion of every World Cup and Women’s World Cup recorded, “totaling more than 2,000 hours of archive content.”
The selection at launch, however, suggests that FIFA+ isn’t finished uploading. A search Tuesday morning for video of the U.S. team in the 1994 World Cup only yielded a highlights reel from the round of 16, when 1994 champion Brazil sent the host U.S. team packing in a July 4 match.
One analyst noted the revenue possibilities of that vault.
“FIFA has access to a massive library of content, including live content that is currently unmonetized or under-monetized,” Brett Sappington, vice president at Interpret, wrote in an email. “FIFA also has a global set of partners and sponsors, giving the organization an instant set of advertisers for this service.”
FIFA isn’t ruling out charging for the service at some point.
“We’ll be strategically extending – so we will be potentially going into gaming, social community, and potentially subscription depending on where this goes and where the industry disruption heads,” FIFA+ lead Charlotte Burr said at a presentation of the service, according to Variety.
Sappington, however, pointed to FIFA’s need to expand the global soccer fan base (including all the people in the U.S. who don’t call it “football” as the rest of the world does). He wrote: “The streaming service allows FIFA to go directly to consumers, allowing them to grow the popularity of the game, which is part of their charter.”