SPFL feel the Maeda affect as Celtic highlights rack up over 500k views on YouTube

By Euan Davidson

January 19, 2022

The SPFL are feeling the effects of Daizen Maeda signing for Celtic, and it’s showing on their YouTube page.

In normal circumstances, the SPFL YouTube account is a must for Premiership highlights, if you’re a fan of Scottish football. However, there’s international interest this week, after former Yokohama F Marinos man Maeda got off to a scoring start for the Hoops. Meanwhile, Reo Hatate’s fantastic debut saw him win Man of the Match, in a billboard night for the duo.

At the time of writing, highlights of Celtic’s 2-0 win over Hibernian has 518,000 views. For perspective, our previous result, a 3-1 win over St Johnstone, has 43k views.

The last time we saw something like this was when Kyogo scored a hat-trick on his first Celtic Park start. That highlights package, at the time of writing, has nearly 4m views.

For the SPFL, the addition of J League stars has been a welcome boost. The interest in Hatate, Kyogo, Maeda and Ideguchi is absolutely enormous, and will surely have the league bodies casting glances at more Japanese broadcasting options.

Maeda, who scored after just 4 minutes, has already outlined his intention to help lead Celtic and score the goals to fire the Hoops to the title.

Hatate, meanwhile, enjoyed some viral success all by himself. His reaction to being told he was Man of the Match by team-mate James Forrest is absolutely priceless.

SPFL feeling the benefit after Celtic add stars like Kyogo and Maeda to forward line

It’s not like this is the first time we’ve had Japanese stars in the Scottish top-flight. However, the SPFL know they have an absolute gift here.

Audiences familiar with the J League will be keen to see how their favourite players are getting on. Make no mistake, the likes of Kyogo and Maeda fit that description for a lot of football fans in Japan. Goal scorers grab headlines.

The SPFL haven’t had to actually change their approach, mind. They just share highlights of Scottish Premiership games. As a by-product of that, some matches will see phenomenal numbers, and even trend on YouTube’s algorithm.

But the league will be delighted nonetheless. The more people there are watching these kinds of highlights, the better position the SPFL can be in to sell Celtic, Rangers, Hibs, Hearts and the rest of the Scottish Premiership to broadcasters.

So, it’s good news all-round.

Unless you’re a Hibernian supporter, in which case we don’t recommend watching these highlights again.

Read more: Ange Postecoglou speaks as Conor Hazard leaves Celtic on one-year loan