BSKYB has invested £4.3 million into an American online sports firm targeting the hard-to-attract market of young "millennial" viewers.

The pay TV giant - with more than 20 million customers in the UK, Italy and Germany - said it has signed a deal with New ­York-based Whistle Sports to create videos for fans aged 16 to 34 based around celebrities and sports such as basketball, baseball, football, and American football.

Whistle Sports, founded in January, said its library of 28,000 videos had been watched 1.25 billion times.