More than 10 million minutes of Scottish football action have been viewed in 226 countries across the world via the SPFL’s official YouTube channel – which this week passed the eight million total views landmark.
The SPFL YouTube channel www.youtube.com/spfl was launched in August 2012 by the then-SPL – which at that point was the first football league in the world to broadcast match footage globally on the social media video platform.
Since then, and in particular this season, the channel’s popularity has grown rapidly and has now reached an incredible 226 countries from all corners of the globe, including Vietnam, Colombia, Ghana and Saint Lucia.
Incredibly, a football blogging group in Peru – DeChalaca – have become cult fans of Peterhead FC after viewing matches and goals involving the Blue Toon, from laptops more than 6,000 miles away from the club’s Balmoor Stadium.
Peruvian blogger, and overhead kick enthusiast, Victor Zaferson said: “We posted the fantastic overhead kick by Andy Rogers, because this action in soccer is known in Peru as ‘Chalaca!’ – the name of our web. A ‘Chalaca’ (or ‘overhead kick’ in English) was first performed many years ago in El Callao, Peru.”
The channel’s most popular video to date remains ”Phantom corner” – a disallowed Inverness Caledonian Thistle goal – which has been viewed an astonishing 573,000 times, a number greater than the combined capacity of all SPFL clubs’ home stadia (477,961).
In the top ten most viewed are the skills of Dundee United’s Gary Mackay-Steven (372,000 views), Celtic manager Neil Lennon giving his league winner’s medal to a young fan (241,000 views) and a wonder goal by Ross County’s Graham Carey, then of St Mirren (164,000 views).
Watch our Top Ten compilation here and tell us about your favourite video by commenting below the video on YouTube - http://po.st/top10vids
The past and present SPFL Estonian contingent in the top tier has proven extremely popular with their fan base in Eastern Europe. Henrik Ojamaa’s spectacular goal against Kilmarnock last season was viewed over 80,000 times amid transfer speculation before he moved to Legia Warsaw in Poland. Henri Anier's goals always receive viewing figures in their thousands which, in the majority, have come from Estonia.
Goals and games involving Celtic striker Georgios Samaras also tend to receive high viewing figures. His winning goal in the 4-3 epic between Celtic and Aberdeen last season has been viewed on 36,000 occasions, with 7% of those coming from Greece.
Top ten countries by number of views
1 United Kingdom - 3,558,668
2 United States - 481,112
3 Poland - 330,119
4 Greece - 253,295
5 Japan - 214,784
6 Estonia - 173,667
7 Netherlands - 169,485
8 Australia - 158,078
9 South Korea - 151,818
10 Brazil - 144,735
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