Facebook Signs Huge Deals With Media Companies and Celebs For Live Streaming
Around 140 contracts were signed for over $50 million.
Facebook has made big pacts with media companies and celebrities to utilize their video streaming service, Facebook Live. The company has spent $50 million on the contracts, which will get them video from the signees, that will be available to all Facebook users. According to a Wall Street Journal report companies like CNN, the New York Times, Mashable, Huffington Post, and more have signed on. Celebrities like Kevin Hart, Gordon Ramsay, and Russell Wilson have signed. BuzzFeed came out with the biggest contract ahead of the Times and CNN. Per the report.
"The highest-paid publisher is BuzzFeed, slated to receive $3.05 million for broadcasting live between March 2016 and March 2017. Just behind BuzzFeed is the New York Times, which is to receive $3.03 million for a 12-month deal. CNN is third, with a $2.5 million contract."
The contracts will give Facebook Live what it has been lacking, which is a steady stream of content from big names pushed to its millions of users.
Justin Osofsky, Facebook's VP of Global Operations & Media Partnerships emailed the following statement to The FADER:
“We announced in March that we’re testing different ways to support partners as they begin experimenting with Facebook Live. We have an early beta program for a relatively small number partners that includes a broad range of content types from regions around the world. As part of this early test program we're working with these partners to offer temporary financial support to encourage experimentation with this new format.
The members of the beta program were chosen based on a variety of different factors, including: partners who had the capabilities to easily produce and test a variety of live programming; partners who had already experimented with live and had some early success; public figure partners who had already demonstrated an early interest in going live via the mentions app; and partners who would have relevant use-cases for live, such as breaking news, and personality driven Q&A. We wanted to invite a broad set of partners so we could get feedback from a variety of different organization about what works and what doesn't.”