The growing popularity and reach of the Premier League globally is leaving rival European football competitions struggling to compete.

Not only to find an audience, but to find outlets to even show the matches.

So German football had to think differently – going to where Gen Z is engaging with football through content creators.

And that’s why tonight, Harry Kane’s Bayern Munich will begin their defence of the Bundesliga title live to 1.4 million subscribers on the That’s Football channel on YouTube.

It’s run by Mark Goldbridge, known for passionate but often provocative, punchy commentary about players on streams going viral.

His brand was built by being filmed reacting to watching Manchester United matches.

“People need to appreciate that we have a certain content style, and that’s very, very popular,” Goldbridge told Sky News.

“That is an area that needs to be catered [to] and that’s why, without the rights, we’ve had such big, big audiences.”

Goldbridge revealed he isn’t paying to show his 20 Friday night matches this season – reinforcing how the Bundesliga struggled to find a buyer in Britain.

Sky Sports previously had a four-year rights deal to exclusively show those German matches here, but will now only show the prestige Saturday evening slot live.

European leagues are finding it increasingly difficult in this market to sell their rights because domestic football is so dominant and appealing.

The focus of football budgets is on domestic games for Sky as well as Discovery-owned TNT Sports, which also focuses its European football coverage on men’s continental competitions, including the Champions League.

More Premier League matches will be shown live than ever before – with at least 215 on Sky, the parent company of Sky News, and others on TNT.

Sky Sports also has live men’s rights to the English Football League and Scottish matches, as well as sharing the Women’s Super League with the BBC.

The Bundesliga is also making the games broadcast by Goldbridge’s channel available to the BBC to stream online. They will further be on The Overlap, a YouTube channel part-owned by Gary Neville.

‘A progressive step’

Bundesliga International CEO Peer Naubert said: “Our approach is as diverse as our supporters: by combining established broadcasters with digital platforms and content creators, we are taking a progressive step in how top-level football can be experienced.

“This multi-layered strategy allows us to connect with more audiences across the UK and Ireland, giving every supporter the chance to engage … in the way that suits them best.”

While the former England and Manchester United player is a star pundit on Sky, he could also be seen as a rival to the Comcast-owned broadcaster by attracting fans to newer outlets of his channel.

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Goldbridge doesn’t see himself as a rival yet to long-established broadcasters.

“We’re not looking to replace what you can find on Sky or the BBC or anything like that,” he said. “This is a community that will be live with us, watching the Bundesliga, learning about it.

“And if I get a pronunciation wrong, or I don’t know about a player, then I’ve got my community there to back me up. I don’t profess to know everything.”

‘This is the future’

But he can be relatable to audiences, with more than two million subscribing to his The United Stand channel, earning him millions of pounds over the last decade.

“We’ve been there growing in the background and I think certain media outlets have ignored that, maybe hoping it would go away,” he said.

“I certainly think synergy and collaboration need to happen more because there are things in the mainstream that I don’t like and there will be people out there that really don’t like the way we watch football, but a lot of people do.

“And it’s about offering that choice to people and there are different ways people listen to football on the radio, people watch it with a commentator, some people turn the audio off completely, some people watch things like this (watch-a-long).

“And I think that is the future, to offer more choice.”

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced it will buy £118m worth of air defence missile systems for the British Army.

But will this new purchase protect an increasingly vulnerable UK from attack, and why now?

For more than 50 years, the British Army relied on the Rapier air defence missile system to protect deployed forces.

In 2021, that system was replaced by Sky Sabre.

The new system is mobile, ground-based, and designed to counter various aerial threats, including fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, drones, and guided munitions.

It’s known for its speed, accuracy, and ability to integrate with other military assets, including those of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force (and NATO).

What is the Land Ceptor missile, and why do we need more of them?

Sky Sabre includes radar, command, and control capability and – most importantly – a missile to intercept incoming threats.

The Land Ceptor missile weighs around 100kg, has a 10kg warhead, and can intercept threats out to around 15 miles (25km), making it around three times more effective than the Rapier system it replaced.

When the MoD made the decision to replace the Rapier system, the global threat environment was very different to that experienced today.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK has been involved in expeditionary warfare – wars of choice – and generally against less capable adversaries.

So, although the Land Ceptor missile is very capable, defence planning assumptions (DPAs) were that they would not need to be used in a serious way, commensurate with the threat.

However, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated (as has the series of Iranian attacks on Israel), significantly larger stockpiles are required against a more capable enemy.

Is the UK vulnerable to missile attack?

In short, yes. Although the Land Ceptor missile does provide an excellent point-defence capability, it is not an effective counter to ballistic or hypersonic missiles – the Sea Viper mounted on Royal Navy Type 45 Destroyers using the Aster 30 missile has that capability.

In the Cold War, the UK had Bloodhound missiles deployed around the UK to provide a missile defence capability, but as the perceived risks to the UK abated following the collapse of the Soviet Union, UK missile defence fell down the priorities for the MoD.

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Although the radar based at RAF Fylingdales forms part of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS), and can detect incoming threats, the UK no longer has an effective interceptor to protect critical national infrastructure.

Instead, the UK relies on the layered defences of European allies to act as a deterrence against attack.

In the near term, this timely order for Land Ceptor missiles doubles the British Army’s tactical capability.

However, as the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated, ballistic (and increasingly hypersonic) missiles are being produced in increasing quantity – and quality.

Without significant (and rapid) investment, this critical gap in national military capability leaves the UK vulnerable to attack.

A newly-discovered dinosaur with an “eye-catching sail” along its back and tail is to be named after record-breaking yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur.

Istiorachis macaruthurae was identified and named by Jeremy Lockwood, a PhD student at the University of Portsmouth and the Natural History Museum.

Istiorachis means “sail spine” and macaruthurae is taken from the surname of Dame Ellen, who became famous for setting a record for the fastest solo non-stop round-the-world voyage in 2005.

Dame Ellen is from the Isle of Wight, where the creature’s fossils were found.

Before Dr Lockwood analysed them, the fossils, which date back 125 million years, were thought to be from one of the two known iguanodontian dinosaur species from the island.

“But this one had particularly long neural spines, which was very unusual,” he said.

Writing in the scientific journal Papers in Palaeontology, Dr Lockwood said his study showed the dino would have probably had a pronounced sail-like structure along its back.

The exact purpose of such features “has long been debated, with theories ranging from body heat regulation to fat storage”.

In this case, researchers think it was most likely to be for “visual signalling, possibly as part of a sexual display”.

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For the study, the researchers compared the fossilised bones with a database of similar dinosaur backbones which allowed them to see how these sail-like formations had evolved.

Dr Lockwood said his team showed Istiorachis’s spines “weren’t just tall, they were more exaggerated than is usual in Iguanodon-like dinosaurs, which is exactly the kind of trait you’d expect to evolve through sexual selection”.

Professor Susannah Maidment, of the Natural History Museum, said: “Jeremy’s careful study of fossils that have been in museum collections for several years has brought to life the iguandontian dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight.

“His work highlights the importance of collections like those at [Isle Of Wight museum] Dinosaur Isle, where fossil specimens are preserved in perpetuity and can be studied and revised in the light of new data and new ideas about evolution.

“Over the past five years, Jeremy has single-handedly quadrupled the known diversity of the smaller iguanodontians on the Isle of Wight, and Istiorachis demonstrates we still have much to learn about Early Cretaceous ecosystems in the UK.”