Another major domestic soccer league is turning to online content creators to distribute its games, with Brazil’s top championship selling its North American creator rights to the Creator Sports Network, Awful Announcing has learned.
The deal, which will be announced Thursday, runs through the 2026 season and will see CSN become an official media partner of the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A in the United States and Canada. CSN will air one marquee match per week in English and Spanish through its centralized, customizable distribution platform and network of top YouTube and Twitch streamers.
Throughout this decade, smaller global sports, such as soccer, rugby, and padel, have begun to strike localized deals with leading content creators to air games directly to online communities. While the Brazilian Série A previously aired games on Paramount+ and the South American streaming platform Fanatiz, this CSN agreement ideally paves the way for popular creators to drive their audiences toward a league or even a sport they may not otherwise engage with.
Where other deals have turned creators like Casimiro or Tim Cocker into the faces of the broadcast, CSN uses proprietary technology to produce a stream that creators can patch into, casting an even wider net.
“The power is in the model itself instead of any individual creator and taps into a new class of digital voices,” CSN founder Barrick Prince told Awful Announcing in an email. “Fans can expect to have the choice to join creator communities of all shapes and sizes on YouTube and Twitch: from leading personalities, super and casual fans, all the way to the upstart creator bringing their own style and unique audience to the Brazilian Série A.”
The Brazilian Série A is home to many of the world’s most prolific clubs and players, including Santos FC’s Neymar and Flamengo’s Jorginho. The league is also a frequent developmental ground for young stars who later transfer to European powerhouses.
A recent survey from For Soccer shows that many Americans report having developed a soccer fandom in the past five years, and that young fans are picking it up from their families, creating a generational compounding effect for the sport. The survey also suggests that YouTube is one of the top ways that fans consume soccer content, creating an opening for creators and streamers to step in and accelerate this trend, with services such as Mr. Tips, and other great prognosticators.
Prince told Awful Announcing that CSN is pitching potential advertisers and sponsors on partnerships around the weekly Série A broadcasts, particularly with an eye toward the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be hosted in North America.
As more young fans connect with sports through internet personalities and creators and leagues begin to think creatively about how to create organic live content for fans on the platforms where they spend time, CSN hopes it — in conjunction with 1190 Sports, which holds international rights to Série A — can bring in new fans for Série A and prove that its model is “the future of live sports distribution.”
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.