The Overlap has acquired Goldbridge’s YouTube channels The United Stand and That’s Football
The Overlap’s acquisition of YouTube channels The United Stand and That’s Football is just the beginning, co-founder Gary Neville told Broadcast Sport.
“We want to build a network across YouTube and audio,” he said. “We’re looking at channels that cover clubs with large fanbases and we want to expand our community beyond where it currently is.”
This deal, “came quicker that we expected,” Neville admitted. “But it fit into our strategy and we thought we should go for it.”
It’s not just the timing that has been a surprise, but given United Stand and That’s Football founder and host Mark Goldbridge’s history of criticising Neville, and vice versa, the fact the pair are teaming up also isn’t something many would have predicted. Neville was introduced to Goldbridge last Christmas with the YouTuber looking for partners on his channels, and the opportunity was too good to miss. The first thing they discussed was their shared live Bundesliga rights, and things moved on quickly from there.
However, don’t expect the pair’s disagreements over the club they both follow, Manchester United, to now end. Neville said, “Mark has criticised me more than most, but we don’t have to agree. He knows what he does and he’s got to carry on criticising me. That’s how the world works.”
Goldbridge’s channels have attracted an impressive 3.7 million subscribers on YouTube, with The United Stand the largest Manchester United channel on the platform with over 2.2 million - a majority of which are from the UK, Neville revealed. “We’re set up to create the world’s best Manchester United channel,” he believes, and the first move towards this will be a significant content expansion this summer.
While details are still being worked out, two new formats for The United Stand have been announced, Stick To United, a format featuring former players and journalists, and The Daily United, a daily Manchester United news strand. Neville said, “It will be a three pronged attack, with content from fans, ex-players and journalists,” and he wouldn’t rule out being among those ex-players to appear on the channel.
Meanwhile, That’s Football will have a full relaunch as a daily news podcast channel. Neville said he’s been keen to create a stream of content in this vein since the sacking of Ruben Amorim as Manchester United manager - which would have been a key content opportunity for The Overlap but came when they didn’t have a recording scheduled for two weeks, “That made it clear to me that we needed daily content.”
Neville and Overlap co-founder Scott Melvin continue as operational leads across the Overlap’s growing media network, with support from Global, which bought a majority stake in the company earlier this year. The Overlap’s content teams are now embedded with Global.
Going forward, Neville said the group, “Need to go into discussions with other channels, but we’re not in a rush. We’ll wait for the right opportunities in the next six, 12, 18 months,” but, “I don’t think of it as a media empire.”
YouTube channels are the focus of this growth, and while Neville, “loves going to the games with Sky and nothing can replace live football,” he also sees YouTube and broadcast merging, pointing out that he created YouTube content with Sky before anything he did for The Overlap and how Stick To Football was shown by ITV during the last Euros.
He sees little difference between the two when producing for them, and when it comes to what’s next looks to his former boss’ advice. “I still look at it as, ‘let’s make the best programmes possible.’ It’s similar to what Fergie [former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson] said to us, just play football well and the rest will come.”
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