Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) has partnered with FOX Sports, owned by Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc., (NASDAQ:FOXA) to live-stream UEFA Champions League soccer matches during the 2017–18 season beginning in September in the U.S, per media reports.
The UEFA Champions League is Europe's most popular annual football tournament and is contested by top-division European clubs including Real Madrid CF, Milan and Bayern Munich. The tournament usually witnesses very high TV ratings.
According to the agreement, the sports network will reportedly live stream two matches per day during group stage, four Round of 16 games and four quarterfinal matches on its Facebook page. Facebook and FOX Sports Go will be exclusively premiering some Champions League matches, while others will be simultaneously broadcast on television, per media reports.
Facebook is aggressively promoting “Live” in order to boost its top line. Further, the company is trying to bring more video content to attract additional ad dollars. Ad revenues contribute over 95% to its total revenue. Facebook said that video has emerged as a “megatrend” on the same lines like mobile.
Streaming live sports is a highly lucrative opportunity as it helps to boost engagement levels (especially millennials) and brings more advertisers. All social media sites are scrambling to get more and more sports-oriented live streaming on their platform. So much that despite failing to win NFL games streaming rights this year, Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) secured rights to offer its users streaming of official NFL video and other exclusive content from the games.This year, NFL rights were secured by Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) .
Earlier in the year, Facebook inked live-streaming pacts including with Major League Baseball, the Major League Soccer and Univision for Liga MX matches.
At present, Facebook carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). We also note that Facebook has underperformed the Zacks categorized Internet - Services industry in the last one year. The company’s shares increased 31.9% compared with the industry’s gain of 36.6%.
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