Snapchat to stream 2018 Winter Olympics live
David Farnor | On 09, Feb 2018
Snapchat is entering the live-streaming race this weekend, as it teams up with NBC to stream the 2018 Winter Olympics.
The deal, which marks the first-ever live event coverage to Snapchat, will bring a top moment each day fresh from the XXIII Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang to the Discover page to Snapchatters. In addition, the Snap and NBC Olympics partnership will include custom Context Cards in “Our Stories”, with information from NBCOlympics curated by teams of editors at Snapchat. NBC Olympics will also debut two original shows on Snapchat Discover: Pipe Dreams, a four-part series profiling three Olympic snowboarding hopefuls, and Chasing Gold, a 17-episode series on the journeys of Team USA athletes as they compete for gold.
NBC will again work with BuzzFeed to co-produce daily Publisher Stories, after its successful partnership with BuzzFeed during the Rio Olympics.
Using a new video player experience, Snapchat’s Live will give Snapchatters access to a key Olympic moment during NBC’s live primetime broadcast each night on their mobile devices, whether it’s a crucial triple axel, make-or-break bobsled run, or high-flying snowboard trick. The Live feature will allow users to zoom in on different live angles during each moment, and subscribe to receive notifications when NBC Olympics is about to go live on Snapchat.
“Building off our successful partnership for the Rio Olympics, we’re excited to significantly expand the NBC Olympic experience on Snapchat by delivering even more content and coverage to the platform, including a live look-in on one of the most compelling moments each day during the Games,” says Gary Zenkel, President, NBC Olympics. “Snapchat’s broad reach and young media savvy users will again present an excellent opportunity to engage this important segment of the American audience with great Olympic storytelling, custom built for this media hungry audience.”
“We think Live will offer a great way to watch the moments that matter the most on mobile,” adds Ben Schwerin, Snap’s Vice President of Partnerships. “NBC Olympics has been a tremendous partner, and we’re so excited to launch this product with them. We’re looking forward to building on our success from Rio 2016, bringing Snapchatters even more ways to experience the Olympics in PyeongChang.”
While the live-streaming will only be available to Snapchat users in the US, the deal marks a major step for the friendly yellow ghost. After a period of struggling to live up to its buzz, commercially speaking, the platform added 8.9 million daily active users in the fourth quarter of 2017, its best period since its public IPO launch, with revenue up 72 per cent from the same quarter in the previous year. The stock soared as a result, suggesting more confidence in the app’s ability to attract a broader audience than its young, digitally savvy users, and injecting new hope for Snapchat’s attempts to woo advertisers in the face of competition from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.