NBC Sports and Yahoo Sports have signed a three-year renewal of their digital partnership, keeping intact what has been the second-most visited destination in U.S. digital sports media. The renewal will continue core elements such as Yahoo Sports offering direct access to NBC Sports live-streamed events such as "Sunday Night Football" and NHL coverage, as well as new elements such as an inclusion of Golf Channel content into Yahoo Sports’ golf coverage. The new term also calls for a marked increase in the sharing of content from NBC Sports’ group of RSNs. The pair first came together in December ’12 and then supplemented that first deal with another pact a year later to include shared Olympics coverage from the ’14 Sochi Games. The NBC Sports-Yahoo Sports digital alliance has created an entity that consistently ranks second in monthly comScore sports rankings to ESPN, and reached a company record of 80.9 million unique users in October. More broadly, NBC Sports through the Yahoo Sports partnership in ’15 set a variety of other internal traffic records, including its largest number of mobile application downloads and largest overall audience for its live streaming video. Financial terms were not disclosed, but like the prior deal, revenue sharing is a major component, and both sides will be selling into the partnership. NBC Sports and Yahoo Sports will still operate separate sites and mobile applications under their own editorial control, though they will continue to share a joint listing in the monthly comScore digital metrics reports. Collaboration around the upcoming ’16 Rio Games is not included in this extension. However, NBC Sports Group Senior VP & GM of Digital Media Rick Cordella said talks are ongoing toward a deal with Yahoo Sports for that event.
