Facebook and Twitter the live video rivalry goes beyond Periscope and Facebook Live. The two social platforms also compete on the major organizations’ live sports broadcasts.
Over the next two weeks, the NBA and USA Basketball will live stream a mix of nine men’s and women’s exhibition games. You’ll be able to watch Kyrie Irving, Maya Moore, Boogie Cousins and Elena Delle Donne take on Argentina, China and France, all from the comfort of your News Feed. The games will be streamed on Facebook pages during American basketball and the NBAand they may also appear as promoted posts in your feed.
According to the NBA, games will only be broadcast live; there will be no cached versions to watch later. And Facebook’s stream will be simulcast directly from NBA TV, which should give some insight into how many people are streaming the games online versus TV. Live streams will be available worldwide. As for the real Olympic basketball games, these will not be broadcast in the same place. Broadcast rights belong to NBC.
Earlier this year, Facebook reportedly made a bid for the rights to stream NFL games live. Twitter finally won out. But Facebook has also launched Facebook sports stadiuma real-time news and social sharing hub centered around live games.
This particular arrangement appears to be led by the NBA itself, so it’s unclear what (if anything) it says about Facebook’s future sports streaming plans. It’s certainly an area of interest, with plenty of competition. Earlier this year, Twitter aired live coverage of Wimbledon, however it was disappointing. There was no live broadcast of matches, just press conferences and commentary. Previously, Yahoo had aired a low-stakes NFL game, with mixed results.
All this to say that there is still plenty of room for someone to figure out how to do live sports on social media. That alone makes this Facebook-NBA partnership worth watching. The US basketball streaming program on Facebook begins tomorrow (Friday, July 22) at 9 p.m. ET with the US men’s team taking on Argentina.
