The partnership agreement serves as the initial step toward the creation of The Sports Hub, an Internet destination that will be a unique, comprehensive multi-sport platform where people around the globe can turn for a single access point to all sports.

The Sports Hub portal will include a series of sub-channels organized by sport and discipline. The structure will make it easy for sports enthusiasts to discover videos of popular favourites like swimming, ski or cycling, as well those of sports growing in popularity like surfing, climbing or floorball.

In addition, The Sports Hub will showcase Paralympic sports and multi-sports games, such as The World Games or the SportAccord Combat Games. Content will include top matches, competitions, key interviews, backstage moments, educational content and more.

A fully customized look and feel will empower the different governing bodies to leverage The Sports Hub for promotion as well as cross promotion of their sports since they will be grouped by categories (e.g. ball, racquet or water sports).

YouTube’s social features will enable people to rate videos in SportAccord channels, discuss them via text comments and video responses, and post them with the click of a button to social networks where they can be discovered by both existing and new fans. SportAccord will use Content ID, YouTube’s content management tools, to protect, promote and monetize its content online and make sure that it is accessible for all in the best quality possible for viewers around the world.

Hein Verbruggen, President of SportAccord, said, “This is an amazing opportunity for our Members and sports to enhance their presence online, thus getting more exposure. The Sports Hub will also offer an appealing one-stop-shop to all sports fans”.

Chad Hurley, co-founder and CEO of YouTube, added: “SportAccord’s members have a wealth of high quality video and we’re pleased to deepen our relationship with SportAccord in the spirit of bringing even more sports content to YouTube,” said Mr. Hurley. “We are confident that The Sports Hub will create new promotion opportunities for a wide variety of associations and enable them to reach both existing and new sports fans around the world with their content.”

The Sports Hub will be launched in spring 2010. The current World Games channels, www.youtube.com/topsports2009 and www.youtube.com/theworldgamestv will migrate to the new platform.