The NHL announced it has expanded its multi-year partnership with Snapchat to add more NHL-related content to the mobile platform. The league’s Snapchat channel will now produce a weekly highlights show recapping the top 10 plays from the previous week.
Snapchat’s new multi-year deal with the NHL was announced in association with Disney Streaming Services, which operates the NHL.TV app. As part of the new deal, the NHL will become the first professional sports league to produce Curated Stories on Snapchat for select games and marquee NHL events. Using Snap’s third-party tools, the Curated Stories feature collects images or video that is publicly submitted through Snapchat to create fan-generated content for the NHL’s official Snapchat channel.
“This expanded deal provides us the ability to not only put our premium content in front of Snapchat’s younger and more diverse audience, but to also tell deeper and more creative stories regularly through the perspective of our passionate fan base,” said Heidi Browning, CMO at the NHL, in a press release. “We’re now creating a full 360-degree view of the NHL game experience, from fans and the league to showcase the NHL’s thrilling on-ice action.”
The new content will be available to Snapchat users globally. The expanded NHL-Snap partnership will continue to include Bitmoji outfits for all 31 of the league’s teams, allowing Snapchat users to dress their cartoon avatars with their favorite team’s jersey. Fans will also be able to access geofilters for every team’s home arena to add custom stickers to their Snapchat posts.
“We want Snapchat to be the best place on mobile to keep up with the NHL,” said Juan Borrero, Snap’s Head of Sports Partnerships, in the press release. “The NHL has been a tremendous partner that continues to innovate, and we’re thrilled they’ll be taking advantage of all our offerings to deliver Snapchatters the ultimate fan experience.”
SportTechie Takeaway
Data from Statista shows that Snapchat has maintained 186 million daily users from Q3 through Q4 2018. The platform gives the NHL the opportunity to reach a younger demographic and potentially form relationships with new fans. Last summer, the NFL also inked a multi-year deal with Snapchat. The wording of the NHL’s new deal with Snapchat appears to give the league more room to control the content being uploaded to the league’s official channel than the NFL deal does.