The Sports Page: NBCSports.com Looks Ready to Make Some Moves

In March of this year, NBCSports.com partnered with Sports Illustrated to share videos, photos and articles. And this week NBC announced a far broader partnership with MSNBC.com, which will combine the companies’ content, advertising and sponsorship sales. ###

“Partnering with msnbc.com will enable us to successfully compete in the top tier of sport sites on the Internet.” said Perkins Miller, NBC Sports and Olympics’ Senior Vice President of Digital Media. But NBC has a ways to go to get there.

NBCSports.com is currently the 34th ranked sports site overall, according to ComScore MediaMetrix, and the network has previously ignored online video. Still, a major opportunity exists to improve its web presence as they ramp up for the 2008 Olympics.

NBC paid billions of dollars for rights to the Olympics through 2012, and will stream 2,200 hours live in 2008. To do this, they have taken on major technical talent to improve their online video infrastructure and other aspects of the website.

For now, NBC is focused on increasing exclusive content. This weekend NBC will stream the NYC Marathon and U.S. Olympic Team Time Trials live in partnership with MediaZone. NBCSports.com is coming up, expect to see video become a major component of NBCSports.com.