Snapchat and Major League Baseball Advanced Media started a partnership on Wednesday to feature fan-generated content on the photo-sharing app. Although no money was exchanged when the deal was struck, there’s huge upside for both companies here.
MLB’s content will appear on Snapchat’s Our Stories, a feature that stitches together users’ videos and photos at a specific event or location, on either Wednesday or Thursday.
The first “MLB Wednesday” featured photos and videos from a number of games, including: St. Louis Cardinals vs. Cleveland Indians, Washington Nationals vs. Arizona Diamondbacks and Minnesota Twins vs. Detroit Tigers. Most of the snaps appeared to be from normal fans and not club staffers.
Regular Snapchat users probably weren’t surprised to see a MLB-promoted Our Story. The 2015 NCAA Final Four made an appearance on the feature, and the NFL, NBA and NHL have also had spots in that space.
But this is the first time Snapchat is featuring live sports on a weekly basis. It might not seem like much at first glance, but this is a huge win for the LA-based company for a number of reasons.
Live events, especially sports, are considered to be one of the fastest growing markets in the digital world. According to a report from Accenture, by 2016 the “overall market for concerts, sports and trade shows is estimated to reach $228 billion – and digital live events will account for at least 30% of the total market.”
Forging a partnership with MLBAM to feature baseball is likely an attempt by Snapchat to continue carving out a niche for itself in the live-streaming world. Although Snapchat says that all content will be user generated, saddling up with one of the pioneers of mobile streaming can’t hurt either.
The partnership also has huge upside for Snapchat’s viewership and potential advertising revenue.
The company’s Discover feature — where publications produce their own content on the app — has experienced a large drop in unique views (from one million to around 700,000) since it launched on Jan. 27, according to The Information. This wasn’t good news for Snapchat’s media partners, who — as Recode reported back in March — were charging approximately 10 cents a view for ads on their channels.
Our Story isn't directly connected to Discover (and typically gets more views), but anything that’s encouraging users to spend more time on the app is good news for Snapchat and its media partners.
Right now, there are no plans for MLB Stories to feature ads, but the Wall Street Journal’s Jack Marshall says that might change down the line.
The upside for MLB in this partnership is a little more simple: It allows the league to connect with an audience that’s overwhelmingly young. Based off a recent comScore report, 71 percent of U.S. Snapchat users (18-plus) are between the ages of 18-34.
The median age for baseball’s television viewers in 2013 was more than 54 years old, so capturing a young demographic on Snapchat — even if it’s just user-generated content for now — is probably cause for celebration at MLB headquarters.
