Eleven Sports acquires MyCujoo
November 9, 2020
Eleven Sports has confirmed the acquisition of live streaming company MyCujoo and its MyCujoo Live Services streaming technology.
Eleven says the purchase lays the foundations for a new global service and adds transformative and scalable new technology capabilities to the group. The deal will also empower Eleven to provide rights holders across the sports and entertainment industries with access to live streaming technology and tools.
Launched in 2015 by co-founders Pedro and João Presa, MyCujoo has enabled football federations, leagues, clubs and players to showcase their games live to a global audience. In 2019 alone, MyCujoo streamed over 22,000 matches from 3,500 content creators, reaching more than 26 million unique users around the world.
MyCujoo’s consumer platform will be folded into Eleven, to create a new and enhanced global Eleven platform. Eleven’s immersive viewing features will be integrated into the offering, and elements of Eleven’s longtail rights proposition will be added to the platform in a phased approach over the coming months. The content offering will be organised into the three verticals unveiled in the Eleven 2.0 strategy announcement in August – Eleven Next, Eleven Women and Eleven Esports. The platform is scheduled to be fully operational in 2021.
Eleven’s new global service will complement Eleven’s regional platforms across Europe and Asia. Eleven Belgium, Portugal, Poland, Italy, Taiwan, Myanmar (MySports) and Japan will continue to serve local fans directly with the best live sport and entertainment.
Luis Vicente, Eleven CEO, said: “We’re delighted to welcome MyCujoo into the Eleven family. We will be coming together to give federations, teams and players a new and improved home to showcase their talent. We aim to serve dedicated communities of supporters everywhere with a first-class global sports destination and thousands of hours of live sport. MyCujoo has proved itself to be a leading destination for longtail content over the past five years. We look forward to building on that incredible legacy and taking the offering to the next level. By bringing our technology, content and expertise together we are committed to building a world leading destination for fans and content creators.”
Vicente continued: “This is a milestone moment in the Eleven journey. Over the next few months we will become the home for sports democratisation – premium, professional, semi-professional, amateur, long-tail, new-tail, real and virtual. Our platform will provide access for every sport, athlete, player, content creator and fan. More than ever we stand ‘By the Fans. For the Fans’.”
Pedro and João Presa, MyCujoo Co-founders, added: “MyCujoo was founded with a single mission – to provide accessible but powerful technology for football’s non-elite to live stream, showcase and realise the value in their content. That mission has seen millions of fans worldwide engaging with their clubs more closely than ever before. With MyCujoo Live Services we’ve taken that one step further by opening up our technology to rights holders who need a flexible, powerful solution that enables them to deliver world-class live experiences in a matter of minutes wherever their fans are located, on platforms of their own choosing. In Eleven, we’ve found a partner that not only shares our commitment to celebrating local and grassroots sport, but also accelerating untapped broadcast potential in live video for organisations worldwide.”
MyCujoo’s investors, who include Go4it Capital, Sapphire Sport, and Carsten Thoma, have backed an acquisition which will see their investment retained in the Eleven group. This acquisition will celebrate user generated content, provide unprecedented visibility for thousands of teams and leagues around the world, and give access to hundreds of thousands of hours of additional live sport everywhere, together with further developing MyCujoo Live Services as a leading B2B solution for streamers of every scale.