Rakuten this week announced the launch of Rakuten Sports, a new live streaming, VOD sports entertainment platform to deliver sports content to a global audience.
Rakuten Sports provides viewers with Meiji Yasuda J1 League matches from the 2019 season both live and on demand. The service’s content portfolio, currently centered on soccer, also features the original series Iniesta TV, which follows the international soccer star Andrés Iniesta who plays for the Rakuten Group’s J.League soccer club, Vissel Kobe. Rakuten has partnered with Lagardère Sports, the international media rights distributor of Japan’s professional football league, to distribute 2019 season J.League matches to fans in more than 140 countries and regions worldwide, excluding Japan and select regions.*1 The new service is designed to appeal to soccer fans in Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and other countries in Southeast Asia, where the popularity of the sport is on the rise and the J.League’s fan base is steadily growing
In addition to soccer, Rakuten Sports plans to add to its offerings by introducing basketball, table tennis and other sports in the future. Going forward, the sports entertainment platform also plans to introduce new user engagement capabilities that will allow global sports fans to interact with the content while communicating with other sports fans in new, innovative ways.
Makoto Arima, Group EVP, Chief Revenue Officer and President of Rakuten's Media & Sports Company
We are delighted to deliver the joy of sports to people around the world, which is why Rakuten has worked alongside our partners to bring a diverse lineup of sports initiatives to life.
