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Sky Sports to stream Soccer Saturday on Facebook and YouTube for Premier League kick off

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By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

August 13, 2016 | 2 min read

Sky Sports is attempting to leverage the excitement around the Premier League kick off today (13 August) by making its flagship Soccer Saturday show available to stream for free on Facebook and YouTube.

Sky Sports

Sky Sports

Football fans will be able to watch Jeff Stelling and co report on all of today's matches from 3pm, regardless of whether they have a Sky subscription, after Sky Sports announced that it would broadcast the show for the first time on its Facebook and YouTube pages.

In addition to its regular broadcast on Sky Sports News HQ and Sky Sports 1, Soccer Saturday will also be shown on Sky 1, Pick and the Sky Sports website.

Discussing the move, Stelling said: "We're delighted to open up our coverage ofSoccer Saturday to even more people across our channels and online."

The move is intended to capitalise on the excitement around the season's highly anticipated launch while also enticing football fans to subscribe to the Sky Sports TV package, which has been affected by viewers jumping ship to BT Sport.

Streaming the show live on Facebook and YouTube is in line with a growing trend from sports broadcasters who now recognise the commercial opportunities around airing content across social. BT sport decided to live stream the Europa League and Champions League finals for free on YouTube and, it unsurprisingly, saw a significant jump in viewing figures.

The commercial opportunities with streaming on social hinge on the platforms, such as YouTube, handing over the viewer data to broadcasters for them to use. This is something which Facebook has been less forthcoming with in comparison to YouTube.

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