YouTube Strikes Deal With Chelsea Football Club

Chelsea have struck a deal to show archive footage and club news on YouTube, the first such deal to be done by a Premiership football club.

The deal will see content from the club's subscription channel Chelsea TV appear in a branded area of the video-sharing website titled www.youtube.com/chelseafc. The site will feature daily news updates, archive footage of Chelsea games, and other features including jokes from Chelsea physio Billy McCulloch.

Restrictions in the Premier League's broadcast contract means live footage will not be shown.

Content is produced by Chelsea Digital Media, a joint venture subsidiary owned by Chelsea and BSkyB.

Chelsea's chief executive, Peter Kenyon, said: "We are delighted to work with YouTube. Chelsea is the first football club to move into what is clearly one of the fastest-growing new media platforms."

"This will allow us to offer our fans exciting Chelsea FC content in a very unique way, as well as an opportunity to reach a whole new audience."

The deal comes as YouTube, recently purchased by Google for $1.65bn, moves to legitimise its content. The site's success was built on home-made video contributions and bootlegged clips posted by users - more than 100,000 are uploaded every day - but increasingly broadcasters and rights holders have sought to have content removed.

Football is a huge driver of traffic to the site, with millions of clips and goals available. The Premier League has been in talks with YouTube over removing its content from the site, and entertainment giant Viacom recently demanded that YouTube remove 100,000 clips.

Chelsea's move, however, is an acknowledgement that some bootlegging is inevitable, so it is more productive to attempt to control the content that appears on the site.

The BBC is considering a similar deal that would see programme clips and content appearing in a branded area of the website.