Chelsea has become the first Premiership football club to strike a deal with YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by Google. Under the partnership archive footage of Chelsea games will appear on a tailored page on the YouTube site.

Chelsea's YouTube page allows fans to congregate online, watch clips of commentary on the club's fortunes and post their views on the season's progress, but it will not be able to show live footage of games.

In November the FA Premier League ordered YouTube to pull down pirated clips of top-flight matches in a bid to defend the value of television rights from erosion by online bootleggers.

From next season online rights for Premiership footage will be owned by NTL, the cable group, which flagged the right to show "near live" coverage as a cornerstone of its internet strategy.

A Chelsea spokesman said no money was yet involved in the tie-up, but that Chelsea was seeking to "access a new community". He added that Chelsea could consider adding avertising in the future.

YouTube launched its "branded channel" business last year in an effort to reap advertising revenues from the 100 million video downloads it delivers a day. Warner Music Group was the first to roll out one of the dedicated channels, with a campaign to promote Paris Hilton's music career in August.

In contrast to the Hilton site, Chelsea's page was launched without any third-party advertising.

YouTube regards sports fans as a key target market. In the US this month, amateur videos from the site were aired by CBS, the broadcaster, during its coverage of the Super Bowl.

The day after the American football final, seven of the ten most-viewed videos online were Super Bowl advertisements, according to Vidmeter.com.

Last year Google, which acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion (£846.5 million), ran the joga.com website in conjunction with Nike, the sports equipment giant, around the World Cup.

One part of the site allowed users to submit videos of themselves playing "keepy-uppy" — when they passed the ball off-screen, the video would cut to footage of one of the stars from the tournament, who would appear to join in the game.

Content for the Chelsea-YouTube venture will be produced by Chelsea Digital Media, a joint venture between Chelsea and BSkyB, the pay-TV broadcaster that is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times.

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