During last year’s Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, NBC tried something new — covering the action not just on TV, but also on Snapchat. The result? Tens of millions of viewers on the social platform tuned into Olympics content.
“We walked out of Rio after seeing tremendous results on YouTube — I think there were billions of views of our content on YouTube, and Snapchat had 35 million under 24-year-olds watching the Olympic content that we created together with them and Buzzfeed,” Gary Zenkel, the president of NBC Olympics, said during an Advertising Week panel in September.
NBC’s partnership with Snapchat and Buzzfeed—NBCUniversal also invested in both companies—created a number of Snapchat Discover stories in Rio, and will do the same for this winter’s Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, according to an announcement from March.
“We worked with them on a plan for the Olympics, and the Olympics was a huge success on Snapchat in Rio last year—over 35 million people in the U.S. tuned into Olympics coverage on Snap—and for both NBC and Snapchat, it was a huge win,” Nick Bell, Snap Inc.’s VP of Content, said during a panel at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.
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Snap is helping NBC keep its Olympics coverage relevant to a younger audience that watches less traditional television. NBC, which owns the rights to broadcast the Olympics until at least 2032, paid $4.38 billion in 2011 and another $7.75 billion in 2014 to extend their rights until the 2032 Summer Olympics.
Bell said Snap and NBC started talking about the Olympics and NBC executives were worried that the $12 billion total investment in broadcast rights would progressively lose value. After the success of the partnership during the Rio games, “the conversation continued about how we could do more together … NBC subsequently invested in Snap and it really helped tighten the relationship,” Bell added.
“Clearly there’s a section of the audience that is young and is spending more time there (on Snapchat) than they are watching linear television, and we’re willing to accept the fact that if we have to pour some more coverage there, we’re gonna continue to do it,” Zenkel added.
The specific coverage that will be available on Snapchat will include Our Story content that is submitted by fans and “Snapchatters” in Pyeongchang, according to NBC’s announcement. Snapchat will curate the submissions to deliver the experience of being at the Olympics.
On the other hand, Publisher Stories will feature content that fully covers the Games and will be produced by Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed will take advantage of NBC’s access to Olympians and venues, the announcement revealed.
“We are working with them (Snapchat) again, we’re very focused. We love that platform, and Buzzfeed — a company that NBC has an investment in — is really, really skilled at creating coverage and creating content that is designed for that particular audience,” Zenkel said.
“I won’t get into exact details, but the what I will call ‘coverage’ on Snapchat will take it to a new level in Pyeongchang and we’re excited about that.”