As the European football season slowly returns, — with league kickoffs, early qualifiers and pre-season friendlies — so top clubs are making their final international stops before returning home for the big leagues. FC Barcelona just wrapped up its tour of Japan and South Korea, where the team showcased its new signings and drew huge fanfare. One of the matches peaked at 2.2 million live viewers, making it the most popular football stream of the week and the second-largest livestream audience ever recorded for a football team.
Barcelona returned to Asia for the first time in six years, marking the club’s seventh tour of the region. During the trip, Barça played friendlies against Japan’s Vissel Kobe and South Korean sides Daegu FC and FC Seoul. The match against Seoul, streamed on the club’s official channel, pulled in a record-breaking viewership on YouTube and stood out as one of the biggest livestreaming moments of the week.
Barcelona’s clash with FC Seoul turned into a goalfest, with both sides combining for ten goals in a 7:3 win for the Catalan giants. Beyond Barça’s enormous fanbase across Asia, a key factor behind the record-breaking viewership was the buzz surrounding the club’s new signings: many fans tuned in to catch their debut appearances. Among the summer arrivals were Pau Víctor, Pablo Torre, Roony Bardghji, and Marcus Rashford, who joined on loan from Manchester United.
Interestingly, another football club followed closely behind Barça in terms of weekly livestream viewership — Turkish champions Galatasaray. Their official YouTube channel drew over 2 million viewers last week. The surge came shortly after the club made headlines by finalizing the permanent transfer of Victor Osimhen from Napoli. Previously on loan, Osimhen’s move (reportedly worth €75 million) now stands as the most expensive transfer in Turkish football history.
Even more intriguing is that when looking at the all-time livestream audience rankings among football clubs, Galatasaray comes out on top. The club’s record-breaking stream took place during the announcement of Leroy Sané’s signing from Bayern Munich.
The third and final football club to surpass one million live viewers in a single broadcast is PSG — a team that, until this year, was the only one to have ever reached that milestone. Their peak stream dates back to the Lionel Messi era, during a high-profile friendly against the RIyadh All-Stars, a team that notably included Cristiano Ronaldo.
Interestingly, many of the clubs now occupying the top 10 livestream audience rankings only entered the list this year. Liverpool and Tottenham, for example, reached those numbers during title parades celebrating their respective Premier League and UEFA Europa League (UEL) triumphs. Manchester United claimed fourth place after a hyped match against the ASEAN All-Stars which drew extra attention as it came just weeks after their stinging UEL final loss to Spurs.