NBC and Facebook to Announce Olympics Partnership
Users of Facebook, later this summer, will be reminded about NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games in London. And viewers of NBC's coverage, at the same time, will be nudged to talk about the Games on Facebook.
Context & Ripple Effects
NBC had already used Facebook Connect around its 2009 Winter Olympics coverage, while Facebook entered the London Games with a dedicated athlete portal. The partnership turns those separate social features into a coordinated promotion and conversation channel for NBC’s coverage.
The arrangement extends NBC’s longer effort to adapt Olympic coverage to new media viewing habits by making Facebook an explicit companion destination rather than simply a login or distribution feature.
First-order effects
- NBC gains Facebook reminders that steer users toward its London Olympics coverage, while Facebook gains prompts embedded in NBC’s broadcasts that direct viewers into Games discussion on its platform.
Second-order effects
- Olympic audience engagement becomes more measurable and platform-mediated for NBC, concentrating the broadcast’s social conversation on Facebook rather than leaving it to NBC’s own web properties.
Third-order effects
- The partnership points toward major live-event broadcasters treating social networks as distribution-adjacent partners: television supplies the event audience, while the platform supplies ongoing conversation and referral traffic.
The trend: Live sports coverage is evolving into a coordinated broadcast-and-social experience in which audience attention is shared between the rights holder and a platform partner.