(credit: Ron Amadeo)
Live sports streaming is a hot commodity for Internet companies, and now some have their sights on the 2018 World Cup. According to a Bloomberg report, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat are looking to obtain online streaming rights for World Cup game highlights. Fox Sports is the exclusive rights holder for the 2018 World Cup, to be hosted by Russia, and those social media websites are reportedly bidding tens of millions of dollars for the rights to stream highlights of games broadcast in the US.
Whether Fox will sell the rights for these game highlights to one company or spread them out among many companies is unclear. It’s worth noting that Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat are only bidding for highlights—not the rights to stream full World Cup matches. Fox reportedly paid $ 400 million for multi-year rights to the World Cup and will air games on broadcast and cable television.
But highlights may be in higher demand for the 2018 World Cup because many broadcasted games will be shown at odd times thanks to the Russian time difference. Short sports clips, like highlights, lend themselves well to social media, but they could be sought out even more during the next World Cup by soccer fans who can’t watch games at 2 am.
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