Facebook Watch announced a slew of new sports programming centered around the women’s soccer World Cup, the cricket World Cup, Australian sports, and a renewal of Ball in the Family for a fifth season.
The Players’ Tribune has teamed with U.S. women’s national team members Megan Rapinoe and Lindsey Horan on a new program called Generations. Rapinoe is the team’s 33-year-old co-captain now competing in her third World Cup while Horan, 25, is making her Cup debut. Each scored a goal in Tuesday’s tournament opener, a 13-0 drubbing of Thailand. The show is a docuseries centered on the prelude to the World Cup and the players’ lives outside soccer, including Rapinoe’s high-profile equal rights activism.
The International Cricket Council partnership is producing match previews, highlights, and analysis from every match of the ongoing World Cup. Those videos will be available everywhere except the U.S. There is also a cricket component to Facebook Watch’s Australian sports coverage, with that country’s cricket, football, and rugby leagues each posting highlights and creating shoulder content.
Ball in the Family tracks the hoop-centric lives of LaVar Ball and his sons Lonzo (with the Lakers), LiAngelo (hoping to join an NBA Summer League roster), and LaMelo (who is preparing for the 2020 draft) as well as their Big Baller Brand. The series launched in 2017, and its popularity has warranted a lengthening of each episode.
Facebook also released some viewership data of their previous partnerships. Its UEFA Champions League coverage in Latin America received more than 48 million interactions with 24 million users watching matches for at least one minute. Facebook also began carrying Spanish La Liga soccer matches on the Indian subcontinent. La Liga’s Facebook page in India has more followers than in any other country, with 82 percent of those tuning in under the age of 35.
Across all genres of Facebook Watch, not just sports, the company reported 720 million users who tune in for at least one minute each month and 140 million who do so each day. The daily visitors are said to watch for an average of 26 minutes. Users are eight times more likely to comment when utilizing Watch Party, Facebook’s social viewing experience. (Facebook previously admitted to inflating its video audience by counting views of only three seconds, as detailed here by Fortune. The new data makes clear that only views of at least a minute are included.)
MLB is returning to Facebook in the second half of the season in a previously announced deal. Only six games will be broadcast non-exclusively in 2019, compared to 25 exclusive games last year.
SportTechie Takeaway
These numbers and new programs suggest that Facebook Watch is gaining its footing. The 140 million daily users is nearly double the self-reported total from last December of 75 million. Live sports appear to be a draw in some international markets, though that part of the offering has been de-emphasized by Facebook in the U.S. Twitter recently has done the same, suggesting that the American market still prefers its live sports on other platforms, using social media as a true second screen rather than in an embedded platform.