The NFL’s announcement of a three-year partnership with Tencent to make Tencent Sports the exclusive destination in China for live digital streaming of games means big things for streaming on social networks.
NFL live games including the Super Bowl, the playoffs, Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football will be available for fans to access through Tencent’s NFL sections on both mobile and desktop terminals including Tencent Sports, QQ.com, Tencent Video, Kuai Bao, Penguin Live, Tencent Sports app, Tencent Video app, Tencent News app, as well as its social networking services, QQ and WeChat.
WeChat, an instant messaging app from Tencent, alone has more than 960 million monthly active users.
What’s more is that last season, the NFL had already become the first sports league to stream live games in China on another social media giant with more than 300 monthly active users — Sina Weibo — which carried the Super Bowl, three playoff games and seven regular season games. And while Tencent is the exclusive streaming partner for the next three seasons, an NFL spokesman told Patriots.com, “We are continuing to work with Weibo to air highlights clips as well as live ‘in game’ highlight clips.”
On Tencent, the partnership also includes footage and programming rights for the NFL Draft, NFL Combine, and NFL Game Day, as well as NFL Hard Knocks and A Football Life. For live games, Patriots.com reported the broadcasts would be free — unlike the 11 Thursday Night Football games in the U.S. that will be available for streaming behind a paywall on the Amazon Prime Video app.
“We are very excited about the NFL’s future in China and proud of our partnership with Tencent,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “We are confident that this agreement will provide our growing number of Chinese fans with a better viewing experience and more opportunities for engagement with the NFL than ever before.”
Added Tencent vice president Caitlyn Chen, “We believe our capability in production, content distribution and fans engagement will help NFL expand its audience profile and elevate the popularity of American football in China.”