The busybodies of the world who have little time to sit down and keep up with the Olympics now have the ultimate solution, thanks to Snapchat! While NBC holds exclusive TV rights, shelling out $963 million for full coverage of the Olympics, viewer numbers are looking increasingly bleak. In the time of mobile technology and apps, people are less likely to glue themselves to a TV to keep up with the latest highlights when it is available at the click of a button on the internet and social media channels.
NBC has embraced the future of an app-controlled society and has invested $500 million in Snapchat to showcase behind the scenes content involving athletes and the audience to broadcast more exclusive content than that found on Twitter and TV. Every day of the Games, Snapchat has been broadcasting two "Our Stories", in which the Snapchat team compiles snaps from important athletes and public figures as well as other highlights of the day. The Stories look at snippets during the Games and behind-the-scenes at Olympics Village, interacting with the athletes.
The Snapchat Discover feature has also allowed users to engage with pre-game content as well as producing two mini series specifically for Snapchat such as one titled Pipe Dreams which is on three Olympic snowboarders. The other titled Chasing Gold gives an exclusive view on Team USA athletes, including Lindsey Vonn, Chloe Kim, Gus Kenworth, and Nathan Chen. Possibly the biggest attraction has been the featured segments of the competition called "live player" which allows TV networks to stream live broadcasts through the app. Subscribing to these live broadcasts will notify the user when a live update is being streamed.
Although it only broadcasts a few minutes, it helps keep people relatively up to date throughout the day.
