Just a few days after inking a streaming deal with Twitter, the NBA today announced a similar partnership with Facebook.
The league will stream nine USA Basketball exhibition games — five men’s and four women’s — on Facebook leading up to the 2016 Summer Olympics next month in Rio de Janeiro. Starting this Friday, fans can tune in to the games against countries like China and Argentina for free via the NBA’s Facebook page. The live action, sponsored by Verizon, will stream without commercials, and will air simultaneously on NBA TV.
This deal comes after the NBA partnered with Twitter on Tuesday to live-stream two new weekly pre-game NBA shows via the social media platform.
Both pieces of streaming content that will appear on Facebook and Twitter — USA Basketball exhibition games and pre-game shows — aren’t nearly as valuable as live regular season or playoff NBA games. While the league is still committed to its partnerships with cable companies, it is clearly experimenting with new distribution channels.
As of late, Twitter is signing sports-related streaming deals left and right — with the NFL, Wimbledon, the Pac-12, etc. — but Facebook hasn’t been quite as active. But the social media giant did previously partner with the NBA this past fall with its first-ever simulcast of a live sports program when it aired a training camp special featuring LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Facebook did something similar in 2011 when it partnered with MLB to stream spring training games as a way for the league to advertise its full-season streaming subscription package. It also worked with both the NFL and Verizon in 2014 for a deal to stream video content like highlights, news, fantasy advice, and more.
