Sports rights are the talk of the digital content town lately, and Reddit isn’t one to be left out: It just announced a sweeping round of partnerships with the NFL, NBA, MLB, PGA TOUR, and NASCAR.
Through the partnerships, Reddit says, “redditors will gain access to video highlights from games and tournaments, player AMAs, behind-the-scenes videos, and more special content posted by the leagues throughout their seasons and including during major events like Super Bowl and NBA All-Star.”
And what will Reddit get?
More revenue. It hopes.
A big goal of this new partnership suite is that Reddit will be able to sell lucrative ads alongside the leagues’ content. It will split revenue it gets from those ads with the leagues, per The Information. In its announcement post, Reddit revealed it already pilot-tested this program during the NFL’s 2023-24 season, with advertisers like Samsung, Ford, and Volkswagen. All three brands saw lifts in purchase intent, brand favorability, and awareness, it said, though it didn’t provide exact starting figures.
Enticing advertisers is important for Reddit because, while it narrowed its loss gap and grew revenue 21% in 2023, it’s also now a public company, with lots of its own users as shareholders. It needs more ways to bring in revenue–and tapping rabid sports fans is a smart move.
Reddit indicates it intends to expand this program to other niches, but for now, says it chose to start with sports because “our numbers speak for themselves.”
Those numbers are:
“But with more than 100,000 communities on Reddit, there are many other highly engaged fan communities, both globally and in other topical areas such as entertainment and lifestyle, that could be opportunities for similar content programs,” Reddit says.
Sports fans’ enthusiasm is becoming valuable currency to digital platforms. Everyone from YouTube to Amazon Prime Video (which just dropped $20 billion on an 11-year deal with the NBA and WNBA) wants in on live sports, and for good reason: They drive consistent views, even on struggling linear TV.
Reddit has also tried drumming up more revenue by securing data deals with OpenAI and Google, and by–similarly to what Elon Musk did with Twitter—raising prices for third-party developers to access its API.
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