Five years ago, few people would have expected an app which only temporarily shows photos and videos to become a staple of twenty-first century society. Nevertheless, after just over four years of existence, Snapchat has cemented itself as not only a vehicle for people to send obnoxious selfies and funny videos back and forth, but also as a source of news and entertainment for anyone with a smartphone.
While it was once only possible for users to send ephemeral pictures to other users with Snapchat, the app now gives people the opportunity to share (for 24 hours) pictures or videos with all of their friends, and also distributes content from the likes of ESPN, National Geographic, and more via its Discover feature.
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Despite its overwhelming popularity in this day and age, though, perhaps nothing Snapchat has done thus far is as impressive as the newest addition to its repertoire. By striking a deal with both NBC and BuzzFeed, Snapchat is going to become the first outlet to share videos of the Olympics by streaming content at this upcoming summer’s Rio games. In early 2015, Snapchat inaugurated its aforementioned Discover component, which now shows fresh content from many major sources on a daily basis — BuzzFeed is already promoted on Snapchat Discover, and will be showing Snapchat’s Olympics content. Those at the Olympics will also be able to send original videos to Snapchat’s own Olympics story, which will publicly display some of those videos for 24 hours.
We’re on Snapchat! Make sure you add us to see the fun we’re having at the Rio Promotional Shoot! pic.twitter.com/zEz5jBGd3K
— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) November 20, 2015
The broadcasting of Olympics highlights on Snapchat is a very real sign of the times — and a concession that smartphones and other Snapchat-accessible devices make content even more watchable than televisions do. Recently, sports in particular have taken advantage of the mobility of streaming, with services like MLB.tv and NBA League Pass allowing baseball and basketball fans to get their fix of sports anywhere that they have WiFi or data. So, it doesn’t truly come as any surprise at all that NBC is ensuring maximum viewability for an event that it initially paid a whopping $1.23 billion for the ability the television broadcast rights.
The Olympics only come around once every four years, so people already take the time out of their day to watch the nations of the world go head to head in 28 different sports. Now thanks to Snapchat, the newfound watchability of the Olympics is set to make the worldwide competition more popular and accessible than it has ever been.