It’s an odd year, but NBC is already starting the promotional campaign for the next Olympic Games.
The longtime host channel in the U.S. Inked deals once again with Snapchat and BuzzFeed for exclusive original content and coverage from the Olympics—this time the winter games in Pyeongchang, South Korea next February.
NBC and BuzzFeed will work together on the production of the content, which will appear (and then disappear) daily for U.S. Social media users on Snapchat Stories, according to Variety.
NBCUniversal is already closely aligned with both BuzzFeed and Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc (SNAP).
It turns out the Comcast (CMCSA) subsidiary made one of its biggest (and possibly riskiest) bets ever with a $500 million stake in Snap amid the social media company’s buzzed-about $3.4 billion public debut on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this month.
NBC also previously teamed up with Snapchat on the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio with a dedicated “Discover” channel, which sported short clips from Brazil curated by BuzzFeed.
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NBCUniversal has also been heavily investing in BuzzFeed, starting with an initial $200 million in 2015 followed by another $200 million in November 2016 as the two started collaborating on production and social distribution for NBCUniversal’s Content Studio. In February, the two media brands announced they would be partnering on new TV shows, starting with a true crime documentary series.
While NBC scatters Olympics coverage across all of its networks from its flagship broadcast channel to its cable networks like CNBC and NBC Sports, it’s no surprise that ratings haven’t been golden for the last few rounds. Earlier this week, NBC announced that Olympics coverage next year will be live across all U.S. Time zones, which could help in the social media age when it is virtually impossible to avoid missing results in real-time.
As more and more viewers cut cords and move toward consuming content beyond their TV sets and even through live streams on Internet browsers, original content through social media could help NBC make more money from its exclusive (and expensive) rights to broadcasting the Olympics in the U.S. Through at least 2032.
Yet NBC isn’t the only champion here. Not only will it help Snap with more content and a solid backer (especially as it defends its worth after the IPO), but BuzzFeed is also reportedly planning to go public in 2018, which would be a windfall—coincidentally—for NBCUniversal. Everyone is a winner.