Snap secured multiyear renewals on global content deals with a trio of big media companies — Disney, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS — encompassing a range of new shows coming to Snapchat.
The three companies will continue their collaboration with Snap to provide their current shows on Snapchat’s Discover and individually plan to bring more shows to the platform in the future.
David Brinker, Snap’s senior director of media partnerships, said the renewals validate the position of Snapchat Discover as a powerful way for traditional media players to monetize hard-to-reach millennial and Gen Z audiences. “The extensions really affirm the value we provide and reach, relevance and monetization,” he said.
Snap’s deals with Disney, NBCU and ViacomCBS were finalized toward end of 2021. Brinker declined to comment on the financial details of the agreements “but they are obviously major, major strategic partners for us.” At a high level, the pacts are revenue-sharing deals under which Snap and the partners split advertising sales.
According to Snap, more than 100 million Snapchat users watch entertainment content on Discover each month. The company reported 306 million daily active users on average for Q3 2021, although CEO Evan Spiegel called out “significant headwinds” to revenue growth including Apple’s iOS privacy changes.
Here are details on each of the Snap renewals:
- Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution
- Continuation of distribution of shows from brands including ESPN and ABC News, with additional brands to be added at a later time.
- Returning shows: “SportsCenter on Snap,” “SC Now,” “ESPN MMA Show,” “College GameDay,” “ESPN College GameDay All Access,” “Undefeated On the Yard,” “Hoop Streams,” “Localish,” “What Would You Do?”, “Marvel Becoming.”
- ESPN reached more than 26 million unique Snapchat users during the 2021-22 football season.
- ViacomCBS
- ViacomCBS expanded its Snapchat Stories content offering to include CBS content as well as content from Paramount Plus and existing ViacomCBS brands that have distributed content on Discover including MTV, Awesomeness, CMT and VH1.
- ViacomCBS will distribute episodes of new shows each year that have not previously been distributed on Snapchat Discover based on its linear and Paramount Plus properties. New shows include: “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team,” “Bar Rescue,” “Jersey Shore,” “The Challenge,” “Cribs” and Awesomeness’ “Next Influencer.”
- Renewals include: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Key and Peele, Wild N’ Out, the daily MTV Presents channel.
- ViacomCBS reached 57 million unique viewers across 34 shows on Snapchat in 2021.
- NBCUniversal:
- NBCU expanded its Snapchat Stories content offering to include more content from NBC, Bravo and other NBCU-owned networks, as well as Peacock.
- In addition to NBCU’s current content volume, it will distribute episodes of new shows each year that have not previously been distributed on Discover based on its linear networks and Peacock. New shows include “American Song Contest,” “This Is Us,” and further commitment of syndicated episodes of “SNL,” “Weekend Update” and “CNBC Make It.”
- Renewed Snap Originals include: NBC News’ “Stay Tuned” and “E! The Rundown.”
- NBCU reached around 74 million Snapchat unique users across 20 shows in 2021.
