San Francisco, Jul 28 (IANS): Google is launching The Matchup project that will showcase best sports content from local media outlets all over the US, covering professional and college sports with depth and hometown insight.

'The Matchup' will be a part of existing sports pages on member sites and will have its own site in early 2021. The Local Media Consortium (LMC) will run the project, with support from the Google News Initiative (GNI).

Together, LMC member sites account for 78 million sports readers, an audience third only to Yahoo! Sports and ESPN.

"Now, with a single subscription to a hometown news site, subscribers can access sports coverage from local beat writers who know the teams best. And we hope that other avid sports fans will join us by subscribing locally," Google said in a statement late Monday.

This is how ‘The Matchup' will work.

"Initially, when reading about an upcoming game on your hometown news site, you will read stories from the opposing team's local site too".

If you want to read stories from the opposing team's site, you won't have to subscribe to their local news outlet to do so

"Soon, while continuing the content share, we will also launch a destination site specifically for The Matchup, which will showcase local sports news and columns covering all major pro and college teams in the United States and Canada," informed Google.

The site will be free to anyone with a subscription to a participating local news site - and that will be the only way to access the wealth of information at The Matchup.

People will be able to follow specific teams, leagues and players with a customised daily dashboard, said Google.