Reddit Scores Major Deal with Pro Sports Leagues for Highlight Sharing

Reddit's NFL, NBA deals bring more sports highlights -- and ads

Reddit has struck deals with major sports leagues, including the NFL, NBA, and the MLB, as the company looks to boost revenue following its move to go public. Through the program, Reddit will show more game highlights, behind-the-scenes videos, and ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions with players. In exchange, advertisers on Reddit, such as Samsung, Ford, Volkswagen, and FanDuel, can show ads alongside video content posted by the leagues. Reddit will then share the revenue it gets from advertisers with the participating sports leagues, according to The Information. In the example shown below, Reddit shows an ad just before a highlight from a game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Seattle Seahawks. You might've already seen Reddit's partnership in action, as the NFL started testing the program during the 2023-2024 season with video content and AMAs featuring Pro Bowl players and the NFL's schedule planners. In addition to the NFL, MLB, and NBA, the PGA Tour and Nascar are also partnering with Reddit. "We're continuing to build more ways for businesses and organizations to engage with Reddit's communities; this benefits our communities, program partners, and advertisers," Reddit COO Jen Wong says in the press release. As pointed out by The Information, Twitter had similar deals with media firms and sports leagues before Elon Musk's takeover. For the past year or so, Reddit has been trying to drum up revenue to make the now-public company more appealing to investors. The platform cut lucrative deals with OpenAI and Google to train AI models on user content. It also made it more expensive for some third-party developers to access its API last year, leading to protests across the site.

Reddit Inks Pro Sports Deal to Draw in More Ad Revenue

Looking to boost ad revenue, Reddit has signed deals with several pro sports leagues. The social media platform announced Monday (July 22) it had struck agreements with the NFL, MBA, Major League Baseball, NASCAR and the PGA Tournament to expand its sports content. "We believe these new partnerships can enhance our community experience with content that fans want while enabling advertisers to align with expanded fan content on Reddit," the company wrote on its blog. "Through our official partnerships with the NFL, NBA, MLB, PGA TOUR, and NASCAR, redditors will gain access to video highlights from games and tournaments, player AMAs, behind-the-scenes videos, and more special content posted by the leagues throughout their seasons and including during major events like Super Bowl and NBA All-Star." The company says the professional sports leagues are among its most engaged Reddit Pro users, with sports one of its most popular and fastest-growing interest groups -- up 26% year over year -- with more than 1,000 communities. Reddit says its advertisers can align their brands to these communities and the content within them, similar to what companies such as FanDuel, Samsung, Ford, and Volkswagen did when the company conducted a test with the NFL during the 2023-24 season. "During the test, an alcoholic beverage brand saw a +11.3 point lift in purchase intent, a +9.4 point lift in brand favorability, and a 5.9 point lift in awareness by activating alongside premium video content from the NFL," the company said. Reddit, which went public in March, has been in partnership mode of late. The platform signed a deal in May with OpenAI that lets that company use Reddit content to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models, while OpenAI becomes a Reddit advertiser. In this collaboration, OpenAI will bring Reddit content to ChatGPT and new products by accessing Reddit's Data API, which provides real-time, structured and unique content from the social media platform, the company wrote on its blog. Another aspect of the partnership involves Reddit building on OpenAI's platform of AI models to bring new AI-powered features to its users and moderators. "Reddit has become one of the Internet's largest open archives of authentic, relevant and always up to date human conversations about anything and everything," Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of Reddit, said in the blog post. "Including it in ChatGPT upholds our belief in a connected internet, helps people find more of what they're looking for, and helps new audiences find community on Reddit."

Reddit's big sports move is boosting its stock

Reddit is plunging headfirst into the lucrative sports marketing sector. The social media site on Monday announced a host of new partnerships with major sports leagues -- the National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), the PGA Tour, and the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). Reddit users will get access to video highlights from games and tournaments, player AMAs (ask me anything sessions, which are basically just Q&A interviews), behind-the-scenes videos, and other special content posted by the leagues throughout their seasons and major events. Reddit said it has more than 1,000 active communities in the sports category, and interest in those forums has increased a lot. According to the social media site, screenviews on sports-related forums increased 26% over the last 12 months. The sports marketing space is protected to increase more than 20% to a value of over $55 billion by 2030, with fans primarily turning to YouTube, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter) to peruse sports-related content. Reddit has sought new ways to fill its coffers since it started gearing up to go public. It struck a $60 million-per-year AI licensing deal with Google in February. After a successful IPO, the company reported first-quarter revenues that were nearly 50% higher than the year before. Reddit shares jumped nearly 7% on Monday after the new sports partnerships were announced. 1,000: Number of sports-related Reddit forums 20.4 billion: Redditors' screenviews of sports-related Reddit forums over the last year 249 million: Monthly engagements (posts, votes, comments) in sports subreddits across the globe