American football league the NFL has enhanced its partnership with Snapchat by signing on as the first sports partner for the social media platform’s Story Explorer service.
The latest agreement builds on a partnership first signed in September through which the two parties co-produce a weekly Live Story, such as a video featuring unique highlights of a Monday Night Football game. These clips include fan-shot footage and video produced by the league specifically for Snapchat.
Story Explorer builds on the Live Stories service by allowing users to swipe upward and see more videos about the same event created by Snapchat users. Each of the weekly Live Stories will now feature additional user-produced clips via the Explorer function, with the enhanced offering being available through to Super Bowl 50 in February.
Vishal Shah, the NFL’s vice-president of digital media, told the Wall Street Journal newspaper that the NFL’s Live Stories have been reaching upward of 10 million users on Sundays and in excess of seven million for weekday games. He said 40 per cent of the audience has come from outside the US.
Shah added: “It’s been unbelievable. We’ve seen an overwhelming amount of consumption, both domestically and internationally. We’ve really been saying to Snapchat, ‘how do we continue to innovate? What is the next iteration of this product?’”