Why The Yahoo Sports-NBC Partnership is Good For Sports Fans

The newly announced partnership between Yahoo! Sports and NBC is a real winner for sports fans. Yahoo will be able to significantly expand its video programming and NBC gains a major web property.

Ken Fuchs, the head of Yahoo! Sports, touted some of the deal’s benefits in a blog post:

• Editorial Depth: The combined talent roster of the Yahoo! Sports and NBC Sports features a deep bench of award-winning reporters and bloggers such as NBC’s Bob Costas and Mike Florio, as well as Yahoo!’s Dan Wetzel and Adrian Wojnarowski. Yahoo! Sports’ renowned investigative reporting will be featured on NBC TV, giving fans breaking news about the teams they love on whichever device they choose — whether they’re reading online, on their mobile devices, or watching TV.
• Live Streaming: Through NBC Sports Live Extra, Yahoo! Sports users will be able to access live streams of some of the biggest sporting events, including the NFL, NHL, MLS, and EPL.
• Original Video Programming Concepts: Yahoo! Sports and NBC Sports will work together to develop original video programs that will appear on both Yahoo! Sports and NBCSports.com. Video programs will highlight fan favorites including Emmy Award-winning commentator Bob Costas; Football Night in America’s Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison; ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio; and popular college recruiting commentary from Rivals and NBC Sports talent.
• Fantasy Sports: Yahoo! Sports will become the exclusive fantasy game partner of NBC Sports’ Rotoworld, the premiere fantasy news and information site. This will include Yahoo! Sports’ fantasy experiences for football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, College Bowl Pick’em and Tourney Pick’em.
• Rivals.com: The college sports destination will power recruiting and college sporting news for NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports Regional Networks.
• NBC Sports Regional Networks: Serving as the exclusive local sports content partners in relevant markets, NBC’s regional networks will now integrate Yahoo! Sports’ team pages, fantasy experts and sports talent.
• NBC’s Alli Sports: Providing youth-focused, action-sports video and other content to Yahoo!.

This is good for sports fans because the deal combines quality television coverage and some of the best reporters in the sports media today.

A few things to watch out for

-  It will be interesting to see where Rivals.com goes. They already have a significantly leg up over ESPN’s Recruiting Nation. Rivals has over 24,000 Twitter followers to RN’s approximately 7,000.

- I like the idea of integrating Yahoo information into local sports newscasts. Local evening news sports television coverage is a dying art. This could provide a boost to small market NBC stations.

- Will Yahoo’s NBA reporter, Adrian Wojnarowksi, be doing video stuff? It can be tough for print guys to make it in broadcast. With that being said, Woj has some of the best reporting chops in the game today. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him.

-  The golden egg here might be the English Premier League streaming. NBC paid $250 million to broadcast EPL games in the US starting next year. The EPL is gaining in popularity here in the US and streaming a good number of games could pay off big time.

- The mobile strategy on this move will be interesting. The Smartphone and Tablet market is where the money is at, according to Mary Meeker.  ESPN currently dominates the mobile sports market with their ScoreCenter and Watch ESPN apps. Yahoo’s apps don’t have much video, while NBC’s has a lot. Keep your phones handy.