The NBC Sports Group division of US media company NBCUniversal and cable-television broadcaster Turner have revealed plans to collaborate on sports-focused OTT streaming.
Under the long-term agreement, NBC Sports will combine its Playmaker Media streaming service with Turner’s iStreamPlanet platform to establish an offering that will feature coverage of various major sports and leagues.
Playmaker Media has streaming rights to properties such as the NFL American football league, the NHL ice hockey league and football’s English Premier League.
Turner’s iStreamPlanet offers NBA League Pass, the online streaming service operated by the NBA basketball league, and also has rights for golf’s PGA Championship and the ELeague esports competition.
The partnership will deliver technology and services for an end-to-end consumer experience, including signal acquisition, content management, rights enforcement, editorial workflows, live and video-on-demand streaming, advertising, e-commerce, analytics, and customised application experiences on devices.
The joint venture comes after NBC Sports and Turner worked together to stream coverage of the 2016 summer Olympic Games to audiences in the US. During the Games, more than 100 billion unique users viewed 3.5 billion minutes of video, including a record 2.17 billion live minutes.