ESPN has picked up highlight rights to the Olympic Games in exchange for referring traffic from ESPN.com to NBC Olympics live streams.
Starting Saturday morning, visitors to ESPN.com’s home page and ESPN.com’s Olympic section could click on a link that took users to NBC’s streams. On Saturday afternoon, the link said “Watch live: Women’s rugby in Rio,” which showed live coverage from the Australia-Colombia match.
This is similar to deals NBC has cut with digital media companies like Snapchat, BuzzFeed, Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube, Yahoo and SB Nation. In exchange, ESPN will get access to 10 45-second Olympic highlights per day that it can show on ESPN.com, which it can run immediately following the event. The highlight rights do not extend to linear television. In their deals, BuzzFeed, Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube and Yahoo get 20 highlights per day.
NBC says its digital platforms generated more than 70 million minutes of consumption from Wednesday to Friday, as it carried soccer matches and the opening ceremony.
