It seems that YouTube is looking to grow their popularity in Paris – the Google-owned video service has recently begun advertising in several Paris metro stations, inviting soccer fans to visit the offical PSG (Paris Saint-Germain, Paris’ soccer team) YouTube channel. Europeans will kill me for calling it Soccer, so here’s a header just for you:

Futbol fans invited online

The page, youtube.com/psg contains YouTube’s most recent premium features, including links to other social networks, background wallpaper ads linking you to the subscribe page for the channel, and what seems to be dozens of videos of people not playing.. futbol. The advert itself reads:

“PSG supporter? The official Channel of PSG is on YouTube. Discover your club’s videos and news “

Nonetheless, there’s no doubt that this kind of marketing investment, along with YouTube’s recent announcement about new TV channels being added in France and other European countries, confirm its expansion across Europe – I’m sure the London tube stations will be seeing similar adverts soon, though all I saw when I was there last weekend were adverts for Bordeaux wine.
At the same time, it’s hard to tell whether Vevo’s recent launch in France, Spain & Itally adding 50K new videos is good or bad for YouTube. On the one hand, Vevo’s success is built on YouTube’s platform; on the other hand, every platform-dependent tech company eventually tries to get out from under its overlord and spread its wings – just look at Zynga trying to remove it dependency from Facebook.
For now, anyway, it seems that YouTube has secured its place not only as the #1 online video site, but as an all-to-real threat to traditional TV channels. I’m sure whoever broadcasts PSG games in Paris isn’t happy to see this.