Much of what’s been written about NBC Sports’ online presence in recent years has either concerned their streaming service or their partnership with Yahoo Sports. Starting today, they’re going to open up a new micro-site that will cater to long form content that will include documentary-style footage along with traditional reporting.
NBC Sports World, launching at NBCSports.com this morning, is described as “dedicated to long-form storytelling” and “will be populated with compelling long-form stories, essays, short films and documentaries, including select archived Olympic video.” Basically, it appears the site will attempt to aggregate upscale, longer content that can co-habit and cross-promote with NBC Sports Network and Golf Channel’s documentaries.
The crux of the website — which is named after an NBC TV series from the 1980s — will be long-form stories from writers such as Joe Posnanski (who will launch the site with an in-depth discussion with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and a story on the Royals’ postseason), Joe Prince-Wright (who has a profile of Bob Bradley) and Nick Zaccardi. Other writers will include Ray Ratto, Rex Hoggard, Randall Mell and Jason Sobel, all of whom currently work at one NBC Sports’ affiliated site or network or another.
The bonus of the site will be that you can watch many of NBC Sports and Golf Channel’s recently acclaimed documentaries there. Stuff like Nancy and Tonya, Arnie, Lokomotiv and Long Way Home: The Jessica Long Story will be housed within NBC Sports World.
We’ve seen lots of places try to cash in a long form content. Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Fox, and even SB Nation have all invested in longform content in a major way. Grantland has also been a resource for online documentaries through 30 for 30. It’ll be interesting to see how Posnanski’s first truly big venture since he left Sports on Earth goes, but it’ll be interesting to see what NBC does with this site and how it will affect future programming on their traditional, television platforms.
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