Facebook has been boosting its event-streaming business recently, and sports has been a focus for them. They struck a deal with the NFL for highlights last December, and teamed up with Turner earlier this year for a livestreamed fan event/analysis show following the unveiling of the March Madness bracket. Now, they’re partnering with Turner again and will be simulcasting actual live sports action (well, of a sort) for the first time Thursday. That actual sports action? A Cleveland Cavaliers’ practice. From Turner’s release:
NBA Digital, jointly-managed by the NBA and Turner Sports, will debut Facebook’s first-ever simulcast of a live sports program featuring NBA Real Training Camp with LeBron James and the Eastern Conference Champion Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday, Oct. 1, from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. ET.
The special edition of the show – providing exclusive access during the team’s practice and interviews with players, coaches and front office personnel – will be simulcast live on the NBA TV Facebook page, along with NBA TV and NBA.com. Vince Cellini will host the program from Cleveland with NBA TV analyst and former Cavaliers head coach Mike Fratello.
“We have a long history with Facebook and are excited to team up with them for another first of its kind initiative, as we bring the excitement of Real Training Camp with Head Coach David Blatt, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers to an even broader audience,” said Albert “Scooter” Vertino, general manager of NBA Digital and SVP of programming, Turner Sports. “Our goal is always to provide the most compelling content for our fans any way they choose to consume it and this initiative will expand the visibility of this quality daytime programming.”
Despite this only being a practice, there may well be an audience for it. NBA TV is running these “Real Training Camp” broadcasts all week with different teams (only Thursday’s practice will be livestreamed through Facebook, though; the others are being streamed only through NBA.com), so they seem to be decent content for them on the television side, and they may make even more sense as a web broadcast some viewers may be able to check in on from work. Featuring James and the Cavs certainly should bolster the audience, too. This also seems like a decent live sports debut for Facebook; simulcasting a panel show like the March Madness one is one thing, but live sports is probably a tougher test for infrastructure and bandwidth, and a broadcast of a practice like this should give them a chance to work out any kinks in a relatively low-pressure environment (compared to what streaming an actual game would be). This should let Facebook gage the response, too, and see how worthwhile streaming sports content is for them. Here’s hoping they have Pied Piper running their technology instead of Hooli, though…
