Facebook Watch gets more NFL highlights, news and analysis
Plus video podcasts and special content for the NFL's 100th season.
The National Football League isn't done teaming up with tech companies. Today, the NFL announced it is extending its partnership with Facebook, a deal that began back in 2017, which will continue to bring highlights of all 256 regular season games, playoffs and the Super Bowl to Facebook Watch. In addition to these recaps, this year the league is serving even more snackable programming on Watch, including news and analysis clips, video versions of podcasts, classic game archives from NFL Films and special videos dedicated to 100th NFL season. Facebook says that, in 2017 and 2018, over 22 million people watched at least a minute of an NFL recap, a sign that people on its site have an appetite for this type of video content.
According to Facebook, the NFL will also create Groups around certain trends happening in the league, where it will share relevant videos with football fans everywhere. And, as part of Facebook's push for Watch Parties, which lets multiple people view shows together and ask questions in real-time, the NFL is going to start hosting a weekly Watch Party throughout the regular season focused on game recaps.
"We're thrilled to partner with the NFL to bring some of sports' most talked-about moments and storylines back to Facebook Watch," Rob Shaw, Facebook'sHead of League and Media Sports," said in a statement. "The past two seasons show how well NFL content performs on Facebook, and we look forward to helping the league find more ways to engage fans through products like Facebook Groups and Watch Party."
As for the NFL, well, it has been busy working with social media companies to promote its latest season, dubbed NFL 100. Just a couple of weeks ago, it introduced an AR Lens for Snapchat that makes an NFL 100 image come to life in video form, and most recently it launched a TikTok account featuring highlights and sideline moments. Oh, and let's not forget Tom Brady just joined TikTok -- who knows, maybe he'll post some funny videos about "deflategate."
