North American basketball league the NBA has agreed a deal with social media platform Facebook to stream live coverage of USA Basketball’s warm-up games for the summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The NBA said it will stream a total of nine matches, five from the men’s team and four from the women’s. The deal marks the first time that the NBA will stream live coverage of games on Facebook.
The league will utilise the Facebook Live feature to stream matches on its official page on the social media platform, as well as that of the USA Basketball body.
Games will be simulcast from the regular television broadcast of the game that will also air on the league’s NBA TV channel.
The first game to be streamed will today’s (Friday) game between the US men’s team and Argentina. The agreement will conclude on August 1 as Team USA takes on Nigeria.
Meanwhile, Lax Sports Network, a broadcast partner of North America’s Major League Lacrosse, has also said it will utilise Facebook Live to stream the match between the New York Lizards and Rochester Rattlers.
The game, which takes place tomorrow (Saturday), will be streamed via the Facebook pages of Lax Sports and Lizards midfielder Paul Rabil.