It’s November, and the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, are only three months away. Athletes are training vigorously, the host city is planning, and broadcasters like NBC are preparing to cover the 16-day event.
In the meantime, another broadcaster, Eurosport, is creating strategic partnerships to reach the millennial audience in the Olympic Games’ continent of origin. Discovery, Eurosport’s parent company, announced recently that Eurosport and Snap Inc. have teamed up to bring mobile video content focused on the Olympics to Snapchatters in Europe.
The content will be featured through Snapchat’s popular Discover channel and represents Snapchat’s first foray into a multi-language, European content program revolving around the Olympics, it was announced. As could be expected, Snapchat and Eurosport together will feature behind-the-scenes coverage of events and insights from Olympians and other “influencers” that fans can connect with much the same way they do through individual Snapchat stories.
“We are thrilled to bring the excitement and passion of the Olympic Games directly to Snap’s dynamic and engaged younger audience, allowing Discovery to deliver on its promise to bring the Games to more people across more screens in Europe than ever before,” Michael Lang, Discover’s president of international development and digital, said in a statement. “This partnership delivers original content, through Discovery’s unparalleled and innovative storytelling of the Olympic Games, to one of the most powerful and influential social media platforms in the world.”
Get The Latest Sports Tech News In Your Inbox!
This partnership has very recent precedent in the media industry. NBC, which dominates coverage of the Olympics in the United States, also partnered with Snapchat and Buzzfeed to deliver mobile content for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. NBC, Snap, and Buzzfeed recently re-upped their partnership for the upcoming Winter Games.
That deal puts Buzzfeed in charge of producing content on the ground in Pyeongchang that NBC will feature on Snapchat’s “Publisher Stories” platform. Snapchatters at the Olympics can submit their own perspectives to Snapchat’s “Our Story” platform.
Eurosport’s arrangement with Snapchat will follow the same model, according to the announcement. A team of editors at Snapchat will collect and curate submissions to “Our Stories” and create a video montage of sorts that combines user snaps and Eurosport’s broadcast coverage. On the other hand, Publisher Stories will give fans an opportunity to create and share moments from the Olympics with graphics, text overlays, animation, and sound, Discover announced.
“Snapchat gives sports fans an unparalleled way to experience the Olympic Games and engage with their favorite athletes and teams. Discovery has already been a great collaborator for us, reimagining their iconic Shark Week franchise into a Show for Snapchat,” Ben Schwerin, Snap Inc.’s vice president of partnerships, said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be expanding our partnership to give Snapchatters across Europe the best Olympic Games experience possible.”
According to Discovery, 57 million Europeans use Snapchat on a daily basis, and a quarter of smartphone owners in the U.K. check the app every day. It’s clear from those statistics that the market for this partnership is massive, and Discovery is poised to take advantage of it — they have the exclusive rights to the Olympics across 50 countries in Europe through 2024.