Millions of Fans Tune-In to UEFA Friendship Cup

When eight rising national sides converged on UEFA’s headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, for the 2025 UEFA Friendship Cup (Second Division) for under 19 athletes, they expected ten days of high-intensity football and intercultural camaraderie. What they didn’t expect was to become the stars of a breakthrough in media coverage.

Over 1.4 million total views were generated, including a million-plus live views! Single match viewership ranged from 20,000 to over 300,000 people who tuned in to watch the match! The moments were simple and powerful. The technology behind it was complex and powerful.

Every through-ball, tackle, and screamer that lit up the Stade de Colovray was captured by Pixellot’s advanced S3 multi-array camera and its end-to-end, AI-driven production system. Fans in Sydney, Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Paris, and beyond followed every minute in pristine HD, complete with dynamic zooms, instant replays, and data-rich graphics—features that used to be reserved for the upper echelons of the sport.

What’s more, in a remarkable achievement, all 16 matches were filmed without a single human camera operator!

Non-Stop Innovation

Three of the eight participating federations—Portugal, France, and Argentina—are long-time Pixellot partners, so when UEFA picked the Pixellot solution as a pilot for deploying automated production, these Football Associations knew what to expect!

But even they were in for a surprise! This was the first deployment of Pixellot’s next-gen AI-automated solution with an upgraded graphics engine that provides richer graphics and lightning-fast instant replays, as well as benefitting from the radically updated algorithm that delivers even better coverage of all the action.

When it comes to live events, there are no second chances. The success of the event was the ability to deliver the tournament live, at scale to audiences from around the globe. The improved viewer experience, with advanced graphics, commentary and instant replays, was accomplished with zero on-site camera crews, OB vans, or production units, making the whole operation easy to manage and extremely cost-effective.

What This Means for the Future of Football Broadcasting

The success of the tournament’s broadcast highlights significant advancements:

• Democratization of All Tiers, especially Youth Sports With Pro-Level Coverage
  Second-tier national teams, women’s, and youth tournaments typically don’t have the budgets for live coverage. With Pixellot, federations will be generating high quality live streaming at a fraction of legacy costs, removing barriers of the past from the ability to broadcast games.
• Data as a Coaching Multiplier
  Integrated analytics with super-quick automated game breakdowns will serve coaches at all levels with the fully indexed video they need for adjustments and assessing plays with the athletes.
• Scalable Fan Monetization
  Since the entire workflow is cloud-based, UEFA layered a freemium model on top: with free access via their dedicated channel or YouTube to watch the games.
  You can find a sample here.
• Green Footprint
  Reducing a traditional 5-10-person production crew to a fully automated production makes it not only cost effective – it fits in with UEFA’s Collaboration and Unity charter which calls for its partners and stakeholders to amplify football’s positive impact and maximize collective efforts.

Pixels Uniting People

For Pixellot, the UEFA Friendship Cup wasn’t just another use case. It’s demonstrates the essence of what we do, of what we believe in. Every game deserves to be broadcast, every athlete deserves to be seen. From grassroots pitches to senior internationals, the playing field for global exposure has never been more level and the 860,000 unique views attained during the tournament are proof of that.

This can also clearly be seen in the promotion of women’s football in France by the French Football Federation (FFF) and Ligue Féminine de Football Professionnel (LFFP) who have partnered with Pixellot to professionalize and elevate women’s football to new heights.

Friendship is the invisible thread that turns crowds into communities—an everyday reminder that our similarities outshine our differences. That’s why we build technology that doesn’t just stream events but brings people together through shared moments of joy, respect, and wonder. We’re proud that each Pixellot innovation serves this deeper purpose: bringing humanity a little closer, one pixel at a time. Be assured, this revolution will not only be broadcast live – it will be automated!