Reddit has confirmed an agreement with several sports entities, sending its share price upward by around 4%.
A “partnership program” with major league bodies, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, PGA Tour, and NASCAR, will deliver new, exclusive content on its leading platform as a catalyst to increase advertising revenue for the company.
Reddit believes the link-up can take advantage of the crossover between its engaged user base and the passion of sports fans and their insatiable appetite for coverage, with the mega-site already hosting communities devoted to their favorite teams and sports stars.
The collaboration is set to deliver additional coverage such as video highlights, behind-the-scenes access, and other fresh content across the seasons and main events, in the respective sports. The envisaged win-win situation will deliver more consumption for fans while allowing advertisers to utilize Reddit’s vast audience to showcase their brands.
The San Francisco-based website combines elements of social media, messageboards, and news aggregation, founded in June 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. It received 20.4 billion page views in the sports category over the last 12 months, an increase of 26% on the previous annual period.
Today, we are excited to share our partnership initiative to boost fan enjoyment on Reddit. We’re teaming up with major sports leagues: @NFL 🏈, @NBA 🏀, @MLB ⚾, @PGATOUR 🏌️, and @NASCAR 🏎️ to bring more of the content that fans love to Reddit’s communities alongside new… pic.twitter.com/boWz5kZXTF
— Reddit for Business (@RedditforBiz) July 22, 2024
Reddit entices AI development to drive revenue
Jen Wong, the company COO stated, “The country’s major sports leagues see the opportunity to reach global audiences on Reddit”. She also revealed further exploration is underway to develop further engagement between organizations and the engaged communities on the site.
Since it went public in March this year, the company has been seeking partnership agreements to boost its revenue streams. One earlier deal was an agreement with OpenAI to enable access to Reddit’s Data API “which provides real-time, structured, and unique content from Reddit,” to transmit discussions from the site to ChatGPT.
In return, the social media site will be able to roll out selected AI features to users and moderators, powered by OpenAI, which will now be an advertising partner on the platform.
Reddit also signed $60m terms with Google in a similar partnership, allowing AI models to be trained on its extensive content base.
Image credit: Via Ideogram
