American football league the NFL has extended and expanded its partnership with Snap Inc., the parent company of social media platform Snapchat.
The NFL has partnered with Snapchat since 2015 and the new two-year contract will take in the 2018 and 2019 seasons.
As part of the extended partnership, the NFL will add a new Sunday Publisher Story to the daily content it produces and Snapchat distributes throughout the NFL season and on a weekly basis in the offseason.
These new Sunday Publisher Stories will be updated every hour with highlights and news uniquely packaged for the Snapchat audience. NFL content will be available on the Discover page and past editions of the Publisher Stories will be available using Snapchat’s Search feature.
Additionally, Snapchat will continue to produce and distribute NFL-partnered Our Stories throughout the season. Since 2015, NFL Our Stories have been produced with the goal of bringing the excitement of being at an NFL stadium on gameday to Snapchatters, including fan-captured content in the stands and unique access produced by the NFL, its clubs and players.
Blake Stuchin, NFL’s vice-president of digital media business development, told the Variety website: “It’s a great way to show that the best way to watch an NFL game is — and will always be — in the stadium. This has always been a showcase for that.”
For the 2017-18 season, the NFL said 52 million unique viewers globally watched league content on Snapchat.
The NFL and Snapchat will continue to grow and enhance Creative Tools that are designed to allow fans to express their support on Snapchat, including Filters, Lenses, and Bitmojis. The league said its dynamic scoreboard Filter on Snapchat was viewed more than 575 million times during Super Bowl LII on February 4.
“It’s a profitable and growing partnership for the NFL and for Snap,” Stuchin added. “It’s not an insignificant amount (of revenue) for them, or for us.”
In other news, the NBC Sports Group division of US media company NBCUniversal has built on its association with Snapchat by launching a new show dedicated to football’s English Premier League.
The weekly Premier League: Extra Time show will debut exclusively on Snapchat’s Discover page at the start of the 2018-19 Premier League season. Each Monday throughout the Premier League campaign, the show will bring Snapchatters in the US a recap of the weekend’s top action and standout storylines, while also spotlighting the league’s “super fans”.
A preview of the show will air on Snapchat on August 9, with the first episode airing on August 13, and continuing each Monday throughout the season.
Produced by NBCU’s Digital Lab, Premier League: Extra Time builds on two original shows Snapchat and NBC Sports partnered on during the 2018 winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.