By Stuart Thomson

Sports broadcaster Eleven Sports has acquired US-based sports AVOD specialist Team Whistle in a move that expands its operations to North America. The deal is subject to antitrust regulatory approval.

Eleven said that the acquisition will bring together its 150-plus commercial partners, 20 million-plus users and 30,000 hours of live sport annually with Team Whistle’s slate of original programming, along with 1,655 distribution channels, 629 million aggregated social media followers and four billion monthly video views.

Pro forma revenues for the combined Group will be in excess of US$300million for the financial year ending June 30th, 2021.

Eleven and Team Whistle will focus on continuing to grow the group’s offering by – securing more live sports content and developing new on-demand sports and entertainment programming, Eleven said.

Whistle houses original content and online creators such as Dude Perfect and F2 Freestylers. The acquisition follows that of MyCujoo  last year, with the aim of building a new global ElevenSports.com platform, which will launch with a focus on niche-premium and longtail sport.

Eleven’s parent company Aser Ventures first invested in Whistle three years ago and Aser’s founder Andrea Radrizzani is on the Whistle board.

Radrizzani said: “We have long recognised the opportunities for partnership between Team Whistle and the wider Aser portfolio. By welcoming Team Whistle into the Eleven Group, we are bringing together two media companies who have a track record of building strong and innovative sports media businesses in Europe, Asia and North America. We will also be adding transformative new scale and capabilities to Eleven. Together, we look forward to delivering on our goal of creating a global destination for live and on-demand sports content for audiences everywhere to enjoy.”