NEW DELHI: Facebook has become the latest online giant to move in on the world football market after signing a deal to broadcast all Spanish league games across the Indian sub-continent over the next three seasons free of charge.

A statement from La Liga said all 380 league matches for the new season, which begins on Friday, would be available to viewers in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Alfredo Bermejo, LaLiga’s head of digital strategy, told Reuters: “We are really happy to be on a free to air service in such an important territory as the Indian sub-continent.

“One of our goals for the last two years has been to offer content to the widest audience possible, so partnering with free platforms like Facebook, which has 270 million users in India, is key to us.”

Facebook and La Liga declined to give the price of the deal which sees the social network giant unseat Sony Pictures Network as the rights holder in the region. Sony paid a reported $32 million for the right to broadcast La Liga between 2014 and 2018.

Facebook began venturing into sports streaming in 2017 by broadcasting weekly Major League Baseball games and earlier this month agreed a deal with broadcaster Eleven Sports to show one La Liga and one Serie A game per week on its platform.

The deal with La Liga is the latest statement of the growing interest of tech groups in showing sports in order to keep young viewers on their platforms.

Earlier this year, Amazon won the rights to show 20 English Premier League matches a season from 2019 in Britain.

The deal with Facebook is the latest and most significant step in La Liga’s expansion strategy in India, which began with the opening of an office in New Delhi in September 2016.

Facebook has 348 million users in the Indian sub-continent, while figures provided by La Liga show a rise of 2.2 million users in the league’s social network platforms in the last year.

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