Former England striker Jamie Vardy is stepping up his effort to build a media empire to rival those of Gary Neville and Gary Lineker, acquiring the rights to show live Bundesliga matches on his YouTube channel.

Vardy's channel, Jamie Vardy's Having A Party, will stream seven Friday night games from the German top division, beginning tonight when Harry Kane's Bayern Munich face Stuttgart in the season curtain-raiser.

The arrangement forms part of the Bundesliga's push to grow its international audience and follows similar deals with Neville's The Overlap and Mark Goldbridge's That's Football during the 2025-26 campaign. For the German league, partnering with footballer-led YouTube channels offers a route to younger, streaming-first audiences in markets where traditional broadcast deals reach fewer viewers, mirroring a broader shift in sports rights toward digital and creator-led distribution.

Vardy, a key figure in the Leicester City side that defied 5000-1 odds to win the Premier League in 2016, launched the YouTube show two months ago and has attracted more than 11,000 subscribers so far.

"Fans don't just want to watch football anymore, they want to experience it with the people they already know and trust," said Rick Murray, chief executive of producers Workerbee.

"Jamie has built an incredible community around the podcast, and thanks to our Bundesliga partnership, we can bring that audience closer to some seriously big games."

Bundesliga renews deal with Goldbridge's That's Football

The Bundesliga has also renewed its contract with That's Football, which was bought by Neville's The Overlap business earlier this year. The channel will show 15 live Friday night games.

Neville has since struck a deal with Disney+ to carry his show Stick To Football along with a new Manchester United discussion programme co-hosted by Goldbridge and Wayne Rooney.

Lineker, meanwhile, has secured a two-year Netflix deal to stream his show The Rest Is Football, following a successful run during this summer's World Cup.

Vardy's show, which sits within media powerhouse Banijay UK, has an audience dwarfed by those of Neville's and Lineker's offerings, though it is relatively new. How quickly the channel grows — and whether further rights deals follow — will shape whether Vardy can close the gap on the established football-media names.

The 39-year-old has not announced his retirement but is currently without a club after his short-term contract with Italian side Cremonese expired at the end of last season.