Facebook’ mission to keep users engaged (for longer!) on their platform continues, and their recent move highlights they’re willing to pay top dollar to do it. The social giant bid USD 600 million for the right to stream the Indian Premier League (IPL), a largely popular cricket tournament hosted annually in India.
This is only the latest in a series of moves as Facebook transitions into a Netflix and social sharing hybrid. With the ongoing launch of Facebook Watch (yet to reach the UAE) which is to host content from all of you, independent creators working with Facebook (YouTube esque), they’re own produced mini shows, and sporting shows like such. But more on that another day.
So what does all of this mean? And more importantly, does it mean free cricket matches straight to your feeds? Unfortunately cricket fans, the answer’s a no.
While high enough to signal Facebook’s ambitions, it wasn’t nearly enough. As they lost out to Twenty-First Century Fox’s Star India, which bid USD 2.55 billion for both the television and streaming rights.
This was reminiscent of their bid for the highly sought after rights to stream 10 National Football Leagues (NFL) this year. Perhaps not as exciting for sports fans here in the Middle East, but Facebook earlier this year, did attain the rights to host multiple Major League Baseball games.
So with Facebook aggressively approaching sporting arena, what would you like them to target next?