Youku to Offer Live Coverage of 2010-11 Premier League Matches

BEIJING, Sept. 8 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Youku (http://www.youku.com ), China's leading video site, has secured the rights to offer live broadcasts of all 2010-2011 Premier League football matches, bringing coverage of the world-class competitions to hundreds of millions of Chinese fans after a three-year absence.

One of Europe's leading football leagues, the Barclays Premier League is known and loved by fans worldwide for its characteristic fast gameplay, heavy scoring, and strong defense. The League has always been tremendously popular with Chinese football fans. In addition to the traditional teams, Birmingham, owned by Hong Kong businessman Carson Yeung, is also quickly becoming a favorite. However, in the past three years, not only was there no live broadcast of this prestigious football league in China, but related coverage has been limited.

Youku has already launched its 2010 Premier League homepage (http://sports.youku.com/2010yingchao ) for the nine-month football season. The homepage features live feeds of ten football matches every week in addition to on-demand videos, weekly 70-minute highlight reels, goal highlight reels, additional behind-the-scenes footage of fans' favorite athletes, and video coverage of major sporting arenas. The site also offers sections dedicated to popular teams including Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea.

"This is an unprecedented partnership," said Youku chief editor Zhu Xiangyang. "We look forward to bringing internet users and football fans the best, most detailed coverage of Premier League matches, and we believe that the range of choices and the wealth of content that we offer users will make for a better viewing experience than any other way of following the matches." Zhu added that Youku has invested in additional bandwidth resources "in order to ensure a viewing experience that's far, far beyond anything else out there."

Earlier this year, Youku has been authorized with the World Cup 2010 on-demand broadcast rights from FIFA and CCTV, and the Wimbledon 2010 live broadcast rights from ESPN Star.

About Youku

Youku (http://www.youku.com ) is China's leading Internet video website and premier online video brand. It is the top destination for Chinese Internet users around the globe to watch and share videos. We offer just the right mix of professionally-produced and user-generated video from our network of over 2,000 media partners in China, around Asia, and from around the world. And we work with top-flight Chinese and global brands to deliver targeted, cost-effective messaging to the audiences they want to reach.

Youku.com was officially launched in December 2006 and has grown rapidly since. As of December 2009, Youku attracts more than 30 million unique viewers a day, and 200 million a month according to Nielsen and iResearch. Total user time spent exceeded 40 billion minutes per month.

    For additional information, please contact:

     Jean Shao
     Sr. Manager of International Public Relations
     Youku.com
     Phone: +86-10-5885-1881 x7128
     Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Youku.com