The Business of YouTube

A weekly strategic lens for senior leaders into how YouTube is reshaping the business of technology, sports, music, entertainment, and culture.

Welcome!
To your favourite newsletter, The Business of YouTube, brought to you by Paola Marinone and Bengü Atamer, founders of BuzzMyVideos and previously at YouTube and Google. We are bringing our exclusive insights from 20 years of experience leading strategy at YouTube and Google.

The 24/25 Premier League YouTube Awards

The 2024/25 Premier League season has wrapped up. And while Liverpool matched Manchester United’s league title record, we’ve been more interested in another kind of league table…

👀 The YouTube Rankings.

This week, we’ve crunched the data on all 20 Premier League clubs to see who’s thriving, who’s surprising, and which strategies stood out across the board.

YouTube by the Numbers - Premier League 24/25 📊

Before diving into the standout strategies, here are the headline stats across all clubs and the top performers in each category.

Top Line Stats (All 20 Clubs Combined)
15 Aug 2024 – 26 May 2025 🗓

• New subscribers: +5.2M 📈

• Total views: +2.6B 👀

• Video uploads: +11.6K 📤

Top Clubs by Category 🏆

The 24/25 Premier League champions, Liverpool, are also The Champions of YouTube! We did an in-depth breakdown on Liverpool’s strategy in a previous edition, check it out here.

Recent Views Performance (Last 3 Months of All 20 Clubs Combined)
Data collected 22 May 2025

• Long-form Views: 256.5M 🎬

• Short-form Views: 390.1M 📱

Top Clubs by Category 🏆

The Premier League's Winning YouTube Plays

After analysing the data and watching a lot of club content, here are three standout strategies that caught our attention, from legacy clubs to rising creators.

1. Leicester City: The Underdog with a Voice 🦊

33.9M season Views | 96K new subs | 834 uploads

Leicester may have struggled on pitch, but they rose up the YouTube table.

This season, they leaned hard into narrative-driven content. Most notably through the key storyline of Jamie Vardy’s departure, after 13 special years at the club.

What worked:

• Revisiting iconic Vardy moments with emotion and context

• Bringing in outside voices like Martin Tyler to deepen the storytelling

• Making content for football fans, not just Leicester fans

Why it matters:
On-pitch performance do not have to determine your off-pitch YouTube strategy. Lean into the compelling storylines your fans will value and be brave in telling these stories.

2. Nottingham Forest: The Culture Club 🎭

24.2M season views | 67K new subscribers | 493 uploads

Forest’s YouTube growth has been fuelled by leveraging the characters within their squad to create personality-driven formats.

Led by the three musketeers Ola Aina, Callum Hudson-Odoi, and Anthony Elanga, the club has leaned into off-pitch content that showcases the shift in current day football culture. This content resonates wider than just Forest fans.

What worked:

• Player-first content formats

• Cultural crossover with topics such as fashion and music.

• Leveraging player stories to create off-pitch connection

Why it matters:
Modern fandom isn’t just built on 90-minute matches, it’s built on the player touch points outside of games as well. These are the elements we should consider.

3. Manchester United: YouTube Heritage 🤌

653.4M season views | 1.1M new subscribers | 735 uploads

On the pitch, United may have struggled. But on YouTube? Their heritage came clutch.

This season, United tapped into their massive archive to revisit iconic goals, legendary players, and classic moments, giving global fans something to enjoy and reminisce upon during tough stretches.

What worked:

• Archive-first storytelling built around emotional nostalgia

• Framing past glories around current headlines

• Consistent, high-quality production that feels like a digital museum

Why it matters:
The archive is a goldmine. And when repackaged well, it creates bingeable, evergreen engagement.

Final Thoughts

From relegation battlers to legacy giants, this season proved that every club can build something meaningful on YouTube. Lean into your differentiator and build a content strategy around it.

The standout takeaways from the three clubs above:

• Tell stories that compel (Leicester)

• Showcase off-pitch culture (Forest)

• Reinvent the Archive (United)

Clubs that win the algorithm are often the ones who understand their audience beyond the pitch.

• Rio Ferdinand Steps Down from TNT to Focus on Media Ventures. After a decade with TNT Sports, former Manchester United and England defender Rio Ferdinand announces his departure to concentrate on his personal media ventures. His YouTube channel ‘Rio Ferdinand Presents' boasts over 1.3 million subscribers. A move signalling the attention shift amidst YouTube’s growing influence.

• YouTube Surpasses Netflix in U.S. TV Viewership. YouTube has overtaken traditional streaming giants, accounting for 12.4% of U.S. TV viewership in April 2025, surpassing Netflix's 7.5%. This shift underscores YouTube's growing dominance in the streaming landscape.

• YouTube Aligns Creator Content with Major Cultural Events. YouTube is enhancing its advertising strategy by aligning creator content with major cultural moments like the Oscars and PGA Championship. This approach aims to attract big-brand advertisers and position YouTube content as TV-like, capitalising on high-profile events.

We have exciting news to share with you this week! We’re hosting two webinars on important topics within the YouTube space, where Bengü will be sharing insights. Please sign-up on the links below and we would love to see you there!

2.5 Billions Reasons to Rethink Your YouTube Strategy: June 12th, 3:00PM

Women Sports: Hypergrowth with YouTube & Roblox: June 18th, 3:30PM