Snapchat Announces Live Feature for Major Events Coverage, Starting With 2018 Winter Olympics

Snap Inc. today announced an all-new Live feature that will allow users of the iOS and Android apps to stream key snippets of major televised events, the first partner being NBCUniversal in time for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang.

Beginning this Saturday, February 10, Snapchat users will see these live streams of the Olympics in the app's Discover page. NBCUniversal will also be Snapchat's first media partner to create custom Context Cards surrounding a major live event. These cards include behind the scenes looks at the event from athletes, schedule of the Games, earned medals for nations and individual athletes, and more.

Snapchat has provided coverage of the Olympics before, through Stories of the 2016 Rio Olympics, but this will mark the first time that the app will be live streaming key moments from a television event. Additionally, this is the first time that NBC has ever distributed live Olympics programming outside of its own platforms. The coverage will include two original shows from NBC Sports as well, called Pipe Dreams and Chasing Gold, which were created exclusively for Snapchat.

The Olympic updates will start on Friday, February 9 with themed lenses, filters, and stickers, before the new Live feature launches on Saturday. Snap said this coverage will last throughout the Olympics and users can expect one major moment from the Games to be shared on the app every day. As Live support for the Olympics debuts, the company is also still rolling out a major app redesign to its user base around the world.

The Olympic-related news comes one day after Snap's latest earnings call, during which it reported that it increased to 187 million daily active users worldwide in the quarter that ended December 31, 2017. That's a rise from 178 million in the third quarter of the year, and reportedly convinced investors that Snapchat "can survive competition" with rival Instagram.