Yahoo Sports-NBC Sports Networks Digital Alliance Delivers 565M Minutes

Continuing NFL, NHL, and Premier League coverage contributed to the Yahoo Sports – NBC Sports Network delivering 565 million minutes and an Average Minute Audience (AMA) of 77,500 in December, ranking No. 2 across the Sports category in both metrics. The digital alliance has ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the advertiser-coveted minutes category for 17 consecutive months. Total minutes were up 24% and AMA was up 49% vs. the third-place company.

The Yahoo Sports – NBC Sports Network also ranked No. 1 for the most affluent users ($96,253) among sports site in December, the 10th consecutive month that the alliance has ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the category.

NBC Sports Group reached several additional milestones for its properties in December:

• The New York Giants’ 10-7 victory over the Dallas Cowboys on NBC’s Sunday Night Football on Dec. 11 delivered 1.2 million unique users and 42.2 million streaming minutes to rank as NBC’s second best-ever totals for a Sunday NFL game, excluding Super Bowls.
• Liverpool v. Manchester City on Dec. 31 delivered 180,000 uniques to rank as the third-most streamed Premier League match ever in the metric.

GolfChannel.com had its best December on record for total event and 24/7 live minutes (20.3 million), up 510% from the previous record (December 2014). Additionally, GolfChannel.com and the Golf Channel mobile app experienced their best December on record in page views (46.6 million).

NBC Sports Digital Wraps up NFL Season with Record Streaming Minutes
The Pittsburgh Steelers’ down-to-the-wire 18-16 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Divisional Playoff last Sunday totaled 52 million live streaming minutes for NBC Sports Digital – NBC’s best ever for a Sunday NFL game, excluding Super Bowls. The 52 million live streaming minutes is up 48% from last year’s primetime NBC Divisional Playoff (35.1 million for Packers-Cardinals). In addition, NBC Sports Digital reached 1.1 million unique users for Steelers-Chiefs, up 44% from last year’s Divisional Playoff (759,000). The Average Minute Audience for the Steelers-Chiefs live stream via the NBC Sports app, NBCSports.com, NBC.com ‘TV Everywhere,’ and NFL Mobile from Verizon was 260,000 viewers.

For the First Time, NBC Sports Regional Networks Add Live, Local Major League Baseball Streaming
This week, NBC Sports Regional Networks announced an agreement with MLBAM to stream local market MLB games, as well as pre- and postgame shows, beginning with the 2017 regular season. This new streaming offering is available at no additional cost to authenticated pay TV subscribers of NBC Sports Group’s CSN regional sports networks (RSNs). This local initiative advances NBCUniversal’s implementation of “TV Everywhere,” which strives to make quality content available to authenticated customers both in and out of the home, and on multiple platforms.

CSN’s local streaming allows authenticated viewers in their respective markets to live stream games and related programming that is carried by their pay TV provider of the Chicago Cubs (CSN Chicago), Chicago White Sox (CSN Chicago), Philadelphia Phillies (CSN Philadelphia), Oakland Athletics (CSN California) and San Francisco Giants (CSN Bay Area).

Playmaker Media and iStreamPlanet Expand Partnership to Deliver Best-In-Class Sports OTT Streaming and VOD
Last month, Playmaker Media, owned by NBC Sports Group and operated by NBC Sports Digital, and iStreamPlanet, owned by Turner, announced the creation of a long-term partnership to deliver OTT live streaming and video-on-demand solutions for major sports leagues, professional team franchises, emerging leagues, regional and national sports broadcasting networks, the Olympics organization and other premium rights holders of live-event content. Playmaker Media and iStreamPlanet have decades of live streaming experience and industry expertise between them, having delivered multiple Olympics and Super Bowls together.