We put a live football match of this magnitude in places a live football feed had never been before. Via our partnership with YouTube, we live streamed the content on our YouTube channel, took over the YouTube masthead on the day of the Final with an auto-play within the mast itself, surfaced the live stream within relevant Google search results. Google also promoted the YouTube live stream on Google UK; below the search bar with a link to the game, allowing everyone visiting Google UK during the game to see a link to watch the Final for free. Another UK first for live football

In May 2016, in an unprecedented industry first challenging conventional wisdom, BT Sport completely reinvented premium sport content distribution by streaming the entire Champions League final on Youtube live and for free. The strategic partnership with YouTube enabled BT to give away the thing it was selling reaching millions of sports fans who had yet to sample our linear coverage and in so doing encourage them to sign up to our TV channel in the future. The content appeared on our BT Sport YouTube channel, the YouTube masthead and a link on the Google UK homepage.

The YouTube live stream campaign created a cookie pool of over 4.3 million viewers, delivering the following exceptional results:

Consideration for BT Sport rose 12%, and familiarity 11% in the two months following the event. These increases were during the football off-season (where you would naturally expect interest to otherwise dip). The only activity during this time was the live stream of the UCL Final.

BT received thousands of pieces of positive coverage in social media and PR and 140,000 new YouTube subscribers.

Display retargeting of the live stream audience was 111% more responsive than the benchmark of customers who have visited the BT Sport product pages online (0.19% versus 0.09%).

The cost-per-click of retargeting this live stream audience was 69% cheaper than our standard retargeting activity across the same period.

The live stream audience delivered an exposed cost-per-acquisition that was 60% lower than our site retargeting activity.