Goal Expands Partnership With OpenWeb to Power Fan Communities Ahead of 2026 World Cup

OpenWeb, the community engine of the open internet, today announced that Footballco, the world’s largest digital football culture and media company and home of GOAL, has expanded its partnership with OpenWeb through 2028. The multi-year agreement, now in its third year, deepens Footballco’s investment in owned fan communities as the 2026 World Cup approaches, the most anticipated soccer event in a generation and the first to be held across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

The partnership brings OpenWeb’s community engagement technology to GOAL’s global audience of passionate football fans, enabling real-time discussion, debate, and connection directly on Footballco’s owned properties. Rather than ceding fan conversation to social platforms, Footballco is doubling down on building community and the first-party audience relationships that come with it within its own ecosystem.

With an estimated 6 billion people, roughly 73% of the world's population, expected to engage with the 2026 World Cup through various media, with digital, streaming, and social platforms, sports publishers face a pivotal moment where they need to capture the surge in attention and convert it into lasting audience relationships. Footballco’s bet on community is a strategic move to ensure GOAL becomes the destination for the world’s most passionate football fans.

"GOAL has built one of the most passionate sports audiences in the world, and our work together is focused on making sure Footballco owns that relationship directly. By giving fans a place to debate, connect, and engage right on their own properties, we're helping Footballco turn World Cup momentum into a community that compounds long after the tournament ends," said Haim Sasson, President of OpenWeb. He continued “Communities built around a passion for sports and sports fandoms are very powerful. We are seeing a ton of momentum in this category and believe in the opportunity.” 

OpenWeb’s community product suite, Community Core, gives Footballco’s editorial team real-time community intelligence such as topic momentum, engagement quality, and audience behavior to inform programming and advertising decisions. Aida, OpenWeb’s AI-assisted, brand-safe moderation tool ensures that as fan conversation scales around major match moments, the community remains a trusted environment for both the fans and advertising partners.

By hosting fan communities on its own properties, Footballco gains access to exclusive, engagement-based inventory and rich audience signals. This is a significant advantage at a time when AI-generated content fragments audience attention and erodes referral traffic and the deprecation of third-party identifiers has made owned audience relationships the most durable currency in digital media.

“At Footballco, we focus on fulfilling fans’ cravings outside the 90 minutes. For some, it means nurturing a sense of belonging, through communities and debates — whether that’s our latest player match ratings or Arsenal’s critical moments to end a 22-year title drought. It’s why we’re excited to work with OpenWeb in giving fans a best-in-class tech stack to build community. In turn, we expect to see benefits across our global family of web, app and social brands, increasing time-spent, engagement and our own fan data set,” said Jaune Delgado, CEO

The partnership reflects a broader shift among premium sports publishers moving beyond passive content distribution toward active community building as a core growth lever. OpenWeb works with more than 5,000 top-tier publishers globally, including CNN, New York Post, and Wall Street Journal, helping partners build high-value audience communities that drive registration, engagement, and monetization.

“We are focused on building deeper, more meaningful fan relationships across our global family of brands. By integrating OpenWeb’s commenting and community solutions, we are able to supercharge our 500 million-plus Footballco IDs, with declared user data signals from these touchpoints. This deeper and richer understanding of fan interests on and off the pitch increases loyalty and our ability to segment audiences. It bolsters our unique proposition in the market when it comes to reaching football fans globally by targeting their interests, passions and propensity to convert into customers,” said Vanessa Horgan, SVP Revenue Operations.

About OpenWeb

OpenWeb is the community engine of the open internet. Our integrated system turns passive audiences into engaged communities around trusted voices and content, delivering direct audience relationships and insights, loyalty, and revenue for publishers, brands, and advertisers. More than 150 million monthly active users participate across a network of 5,000 premium publisher properties powered by real human connection. Founded in 2015, OpenWeb has offices in New York, Tel Aviv, Kyiv, London, and Paris. The company is backed by leading investors, including Insight Partners, Georgian, Entrée Capital, The New York Times, Samsung Next, Dentsu, and ScaleUp. For more information, visit www.openweb.com.

About Footballco

Footballco, the world's leading football culture and media company, operates five publishers Voetbalzone, Calciomercato, Kooora Spox, and GOAL — the world's largest football publisher. Through this portfolio, Footballco reaches more than 640m football fans a month publishing across web, apps, email, social media, podcasts, video, and more. Footballco is majority-owned by Integrated Media Company (IMC), an affiliate of US private equity giant TPG. DAZN Group retains a minority stake. For more information, visit www.footballco.com.

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