NBC Sports Digital Celebrates Best Year to Date

As 2015 comes to a close, NBC Sports Digital celebrates a record year of milestones, including record web traffic, streaming metrics, and app downloads; an extension of its digital alliance with Yahoo; NBC Sports Live Extra's arrival on connected TVs; a successful re-design of its websites; the launch of key initiatives, including NBC Sports Digital Shorts; and innovative enhancements to its NBC Sports Live Extra live streaming experience.

RECORD TRAFFIC: Due in part to its re-design efforts that streamlined the user's video experience (see below), NBC Sports Digital's portfolio of sites is on pace to deliver more than 5 billion page views for the first time ever, hitting more than 4 billion for the third consecutive year. NBC Sports Live Extra surpassed 14 million app downloads, streamed over 30 million hours, and registered 1.8 billion minutes, up 75% over 2014 (1.1 billion). More consumption stats can be found in the Metrics Mayhem section below.

YAHOO ALLIANCE: Yahoo and NBC Sports Group announced earlier today a renewal of their multi-faceted partnership that combines the content and experiences of Yahoo Sports, including its fantasy sports product, with NBC Sports Digital's growing video assets and significant promotional power. This expanded partnership brings even more content to Yahoo/NBC Sports viewers, including Premier League highlights, NBC Sports Regional Network team reports, and Golf Channel.

RE-DESIGN OF NBCSPORTS.COM: NBC Sports Digital launched a re-designed NBCSports.com in September to provide fans with a clean, streamlined experience that improves the prominence of live and short-form video as well as player news. With more than 3,100 live streaming events annually, the re-designed NBCSports.com is the most dedicated live video site in sports, prominently featuring NBC Sports Live Extra - NBC Sports Group's live streaming product for desktops, mobile devices, tablets, and connected TVs - throughout the site experience.

NBC SPORTS LIVE EXTRA ON CONNECTED TV: NBC Sports Live Extra launched on the Roku and Apple TV streaming platforms via TV Everywhere in March. NBCUniversal further expanded the reach of its TV Everywhere offering by launching NBC and NBC Sports apps on Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick earlier this month.

NBC SPORTS DIGITAL SHORTS: NBC Sports Digital launched NBC Sports Digital Shorts in October, an initiative focused on producing original short-form content for NBCSports.com and other NBC Sports Digital platforms. NBC Sports Digital Shorts content includes digital-exclusive short-form original franchises; scenes and interviews from NBC Sports Group's broad array of linear and digital video production teams; specially packaged highlights and clips from NBC Sports Group's properties; and more. The first two projects of the initiative were Sherman's Warriors and Promoted: The Story of A.F.C. Bournemouth with more slated for 2016.

MORE INNOVATIONS

ENHANCED STREAMING: NBC Sports Live Extra enhanced its live streaming experience for users in 2015 across multiple properties.

NBC Sports Digital developed new broadcast-quality enhanced data graphics that provided NHL fans with new functionality and visualizations, including real-time player and game statistics, roster listings, and live rink maps which highlight shot locations, blocked shots, goals, face offs, hits, giveaways and takeaways.

NBC Sports Live Extra provided NASCAR fans with exclusive camera angles, custom driver information, and on-track information.

Beginning this past weekend, Live Extra ramped up its Premier League Tactical Cam offering, making the feature available on more games than ever before.

NBC SPORTS MATCHMAKER APP: NBC Sports Group launched the NBC Sports MatchMaker app, which helps Premier League fans locate, chat and meet up with each other to enjoy the thrill of watching matches with their fellow club supporters. At game time, the app activates an interactive map that shows popular venues for fans of a specific club.

SUPER BOWL-CENTRIC NBC SPORTS TUMBLR PAGE: As part of its coverage of Super Bowl XLIX, NBC Sports Digital launched a new Super Bowl-centric NBC Sports Tumblr page that showcased Super Bowl XLIX's television advertisements immediately after they aired on NBC.

NASCARTalk: NBC Sports Digital added NASCARTalk to the already established SportsTalk franchises on NBCSports.com in 2015. It provided the most comprehensive and up-to-date NASCAR coverage, including videos from NBCSN's NASCAR America.

NBCOLYMPICS.COM WINS TWO SPORTS EMMY AWARDS: NBCOlympics.com's presentation of the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, earned two Sports Emmys awards in 2015, Outstanding New Approaches - Sports Event Coverage: The XXII Olympic Winter Games, and Outstanding New Approaches - Sports Programming: The XXII Olympic Winter Games - As the Athletes Experienced Them. NBC Sports Digital has won eight Sports Emmy Awards for is coverage of the Olympic Games since 2009.

METRICS MAYHEM

The entire NBC Sports Group portfolio of sites and apps saw record traffic in 2015:

NBCSports.com delivered 26 million average monthly unique users in 2015, an increase of 11% over 2014 (24 million average monthly users).

Video-on-demand views nearly doubled from 2014, with NBC Sports Digital delivering 209 million views, up 83% year-over-year (114 million views).

NBC Sports Live Extra streamed more than 3,100 events in 2015, including the launch of NASCAR live streaming, up from approximately 2,600 events in 2014.

Super Bowl XLIX scored the most unique users ever for NBC Sports Live Extra with 2.5 million, topping the previous record Men's Olympic Hockey USA vs. Canada Semifinal from Sochi by 411,000 unique users and up 9% versus Super Bowl XLVIII on Fox the prior year.

Sunday Night Football delivered a 77% year-over-year increase i

LINK:	http://sportsvideo.org/main/blog/2015/12/21/nbc-sports-digital-celebra...
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