Barça launches its official channel on Twitch global streaming service

FC Barcelona is launching its official channel on Twitch, as a means of providing new and unique entertainment formats to Twitch’s global community of highly engaged superfans, further demonstrating the club’s innovative digital leadership.

The FC Barcelona channel is launching tomorrow, Wednesday 16 December, with a first stream covering LaLiga match against Real Sociedad presented by German streamer Anton Rinas, known as ViscaBarca, a massive Barça fan and content creator on Twitch. The programme will include the build-up, in-game commentary, and post-match coverage. These programmes, covering first team matches, will be one of the core contents that will be shared on the service.

Fans will also be able to access new entertainment and news formats, with exclusive live programmes as well as live broadcasts featuring the players and teams in Barça’s new eSports division. Barça eSports was created just over a year ago and currently has its own teams competing in eFootball PES, Rocket League and Hearthstone.

The Twitch community thrives off interaction and the Club will use Twitch’s tools and develop innovative content to encourage fan participation.

FC Barcelona will work with both current content creators, such as the hosts of the live shows on social networks, as well as bring on board new partners who will produce specially adapted content for the Twitch community.

By moving into Twitch, the Club is intensifying its commitment to the creation of entertainment content within the framework of its digital strategy, where it is already a leading force in terms of both followers and engagement, with more than 370 million followers on social networks and 1,370 million interactions in the 2019/20 season, more than any other sports club in the world.

At any second, there are 2 million people tuning in to Twitch live and on average 26.5 million people visit the service daily. With a heritage in gaming and esports, Twitch has long been home to content which spans sports, entertainment, music and more.  Twitch recently launched a dedicated sports channel, /twitchsports, which demonstrates the huge demand for new and exclusive sporting content of which football is a priority.

An international benchmark on social networks

Barça is one of the leaders in the digital realm, as evidenced by the fact that it has closed the 2019-20 season, the third in a row, as the sports club that had generated the most engagement in the world on the main social networks, with 1,376 million likes, comments, shares or retweets. That’s an increase of 18% on the previous year.

This milestone was made possible by its strategy to create content that can be adapted to different social platforms and audiences in different markets around the world.