Footballco credits AI assistant Goal-e for 1bn World Cup page views

An article about the 2026 World Cup final started with a Dutch journalist at Footballco’s Voetbalzone. Then the publisher’s AI assistant translated it into Japanese for Goal’s local edition.

It drew 803,000 page views.

Footballco points to that article as an example of what Goal-e, its in-house AI system, can do: move journalism quickly between markets and produce more content around major sporting events.

The company told Press Gazette that Goal’s World Cup audience grew 42% compared with the 2022 tournament, reaching 77 million web and app users. Page views rose 55% to 439 million. Across Footballco brands including Goal, Kooora, Calciomercato, Spox and Voetbalzone, the company recorded 114 million users and more than 1.1 billion page views.

Goal-e is trained on 20 years of Goal content. It generates team summaries and suggested questions, translates stories and creates illustrations. Goal says content produced with the system carries labels including “AI-generated,” “AI-assisted” and “AI-translated,” as explained on its Goal-e disclosure page. Human editors remain responsible for the journalism and editorial standards, according to the company.

The World Cup gains came as Footballco navigated broader changes in how readers find news. The company says Facebook’s deprioritization of publisher links pushed organic social referrals from 8% of traffic to 1%. Google also introduced AI Overviews between the 2022 and 2026 tournaments.

Still, organic search grew from 58% to 65% of Footballco traffic. The publisher cautioned that several of its major markets have faced less exposure to AI Overviews so far.

That matters because other publishers have seen a different trajectory. U.K. publisher digital revenue fell 4.55% in the first quarter of 2026 after four consecutive quarters of growth, with industry researchers pointing partly to AI answers and changing audience behavior.

Footballco is also using AI to expand its affiliate operation. The company forecasts that affiliate content will generate more than $12.6 million in the first half of 2026, up 23% from a year earlier, including $2.5 million during the World Cup. Separately, Footballco says AI has allowed it to produce 10 times as much affiliate content as before Goal-e.

CEO Juan Delgado previously told Press Gazette that repetitive, search-driven formats carrying affiliate links — including match previews and team lineups — were increasingly being automated.

Footballco reported £55 million in revenue in 2025, up 13%. Branded content reached £26.2 million, while display and programmatic advertising fell 12% to £18.2 million. Companies House filings showed a £9.1 million loss, which Footballco attributed to intellectual property amortization and U.S. investment.

The company’s approach divides AI work into two clear areas: translating existing journalism for new audiences and automating repeatable content formats. Chief technology officer Nigel Leigh said translation has also freed journalists to spend more time covering soccer-adjacent subjects such as culture, fashion and business.

A separate WebFX analysis of nearly 600,000 AI sessions found that AI referrals frequently landed on product, service, blog and resource pages. That study covered businesses across multiple industries and was not an analysis of Footballco’s audience.

The harder test comes after the World Cup. Similarweb estimates Goal.com visits fell 35% month over month in August. Whether Goal-e can deliver similar gains during an ordinary soccer season will offer a clearer measure of how much of the World Cup surge lasts.