Influencer
Piers Morgan Launches Weekly Soccer Show as His ‘Uncensored’ YouTube Slate Keeps Growing
Piers Morgan is turning his World Cup coverage into a permanent fixture on his YouTube network, launching the weekly series “Football Uncensored” two months after closing a $27 million funding round for the venture, per Deadline.
Morgan will co-host the new show with Simon Jordan, the former Crystal Palace owner and “TalkSPORT” pundit. It expands a slate that already includes “Piers Morgan Uncensored” and “The Royals Uncensored.” Over the summer, Morgan, Jordan, and former Chelsea defender John Terry hosted “World Cup Uncensored,” which the company said drew 60 million streams across social platforms over 12 episodes.
“I can’t wait to kick off,” Morgan said in a statement. “Simon is a great sparring partner, and we both love an on-air tear-up, so watch out for fireworks. But we are also passionate about football, and we want everyone who shares that passion to be part of the Uncensored experience. Simply put, we aim to make Football Uncensored the most followed and most talked-about football debate show on the planet.”
Morgan pointed to the World Cup run as evidence the format has an audience. “The response over the summer to our World Cup Uncensored show was phenomenal, with nearly a million views of our last episode, dwarfing any other online show audience during the tournament,” he said. He drew an implicit comparison to “The Rest Is Football,” the rival show hosted by his friend Gary Lineker, which averaged more than 100,000 viewers on Netflix, a number the streamer judged strong enough to keep the series running into the Premier League season.
Jordan framed the new show as a response to a broader gap in sports media. “It strikes me in sports broadcasting that a lot of the conversations lack clarity, insight or courage,” he said. “They are formulaic, one-dimensional and not very bold… I don’t suffer from those afflictions and my ethos of discuss, debate and resolve, teamed with my deep, real-world understanding of the business of sport, provides a real opportunity for this project of ours to dominate the sport’s media landscape.”
“Football Uncensored” arrives as the broader Uncensored operation builds out its distribution beyond YouTube. Last month, Acast acquired the podcast network Backyard Ventures for $20 million, and Backyard Ventures’ roster, which reports 11.5 million monthly listens and 230 million monthly YouTube views across its shows, includes “Piers Morgan Uncensored” among its properties. The deal gives the Uncensored brand a channel into Acast’s advertiser network alongside its YouTube audience.
The June funding round for Uncensored included backing from Elisabeth Murdoch, and Rashida Jones, the former MS NOW chief, serves as the venture’s CEO.
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