MILAN, Italy—Eleven Sports, an Italian-based sports media platform, has purchased New York-based global sports media and entertainment company Team Whistle. This gives Eleven Sports a presence in North America.
Eleven Sports reports that it has more than 150 commercial partners, more than 20 million users and 30,000 hours of live sports each year. It’s rights portfolio in Europe and Asia includes the Champions League, Premier League, Bundesliga, domestic rights to the Belgian Pro League, F1, NBA and NFL, as well as other niche sports.
Team Whistle works in data-driven creation and distribution of sports and entertainment content, including unscripted, scripted and interactive shows. Per Eleven Sports, Team Whistle has 1,655 distribution channels, 629 social media followers and 4 billion monthly video views.
Team Whistle will be added to Eleven Group, which will house a network of OTT and social platforms; proprietary streaming technology; data-driven production capabilities; and marketing and branding partnerships. The goal for Eleven Group will be to secure more live sports content and develop new on-demand sports and entertainment programming.
John West, Team Whistler founder and executive chairman, will join the Eleven Group Board of Directors at the close of the deal. Team Whistle CEO Michael Cohen will continue to lead the company and join the Eleven Group management team. The entire Team Whistle staff will join Eleven, per the press release.
“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,” said Andrea Radrizzani, founder of Eleven Sports. “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.”
The transaction is expected to close by the second quarter of 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.
