People don’t watch the Olympics in the same way they used to. Because of that, NBC Sports has come up with different ways to reach viewers, specifically the younger demographic. One partnership that came to fruition was with musical.ly, a popular mobile platform with entertaining short videos.
And it delivered more than 25 million engagements around the Winter Games, according to NBC.
Over the last two weeks fans have gone behind-the-scenes in PyeongChang with a pair of social correspondents, Nia Sioux and Ross Smith. Sioux is known for her appearances on Dance Moms while Smith is a social media star who creates short, comedic videos. musical.ly also encouraged fans to submit their own video reactions using in-app hashtags.
Lyndsay Signor, Senior Director, Consumer Engagement, NBC Sports Group had the following to say during an interview with Sports Video Group: “We’re putting Olympic content on musical.ly, which is an app which has a very young demo, and just kind of testing the waters with, you know, ‘Does this demo think the Olympics is cool?’ If not, can we maybe inspire them to think it’s cool?”
Check out Nia Sioux’s Winter Olympic highlights as a NBC x https://t.co/BVkun5aCAZ Correspondent! New videos each day on her https://t.co/BVkun5aCAZ account – NiaSioux @NiaSioux @musicallyapp @NBCOlympics @Olympics pic.twitter.com/S95NWL0Jtr
— Holly Frazier (@DanceMomHolly) February 21, 2018
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It seems the activation was a success — over the first weekend of competition, broadcasts from Sioux, Smith and NBC generated over 10 million engagements.
“People love an experience that feels real and relatable,” Smith said in a statement. “They want to see behind the scenes, the mistakes, the realities. People tend to feel more comfortable when an influencer like myself is telling the story vs. a large production company. It’s great that we’re able to use digital media to bring that real-life feel to a global event like this.”