NBC Brings Olympics Coverage to Snapchat, With A Little Help From BuzzFeed

Olympians, get your snaps ready: The NBC Sports Group’s Olympics division has partnered with Snapchat to cover the 2016 Rio Olympics with live stories and a new Discover channel.

NBC will produce the Olympics Discover channel in conjunction with BuzzFeed, and make it available to Snapchat users for roughly two weeks during the games, which are set to begin on August 5. For that collaboration, BuzzFeed will essentially function as NBC’s social team on the ground, and produce content directly from the Olympic venues in Rio. NBCUniversal invested $200 million in BuzzFeed last summer.

In addition, Snapchat will also curate daily live stories for NBC, which will feature snaps from fans and athletes alike attending the games. NBC will sell some of its own advertising against its Snapchat content, but the broadcaster also hopes to use the app to generate some buzz for its Olympics coverage on TV and other platforms.

It’s worth noting that the deal between NBC and Snapchat does come with a few caveats. For one thing, it’s U.S.-only, so Snapchatters from other countries won’t be able to access the Discover channel or live stories. What’s more, BuzzFeed-produced clips shared on Snapchat aren’t exclusive to the platform, with the Washington Post reporting that NBC is looking to strike similar deals with Facebook and Twitter.

Still, NBC obviously is trying to go where the eyeballs are. Snapchat users now watch 10 billion videos every day, according to latest company information, which is up from eight billion videos just two months ago.

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