NEW YORK—The MLS (Major League Soccer) and Facebook are now friends, as the two sides have announced a partnership that will see all MLS matches during the 2020 season have video recaps created for and played on Facebook Watch. Fans will be able to view the latest highlights from the league on MLS’ Facebook Page.

Another aspect of the partnership will see MLS host a weekly Watch Party on Facebook, where fans from around the world can view game recaps and videos as a community in real time. Official Facebook Groups for select teams will also be created.

“Facebook’s innovative Watch Party experience is the perfect place for Major League Soccer fans around the world to exchange views and share their passion for our clubs and palyers,” said Chris Schlosser, MLS senior vice president, media.

In addition, archival clips from top moments in MLS’ 25-year history and player-centric highlights will be available on Facebook Watch.

Facebook struck a similar deal for highlights of the PGA in January of this year.

The MLS content will be available on Facebook through mobile apps, desktops, laptops and a variety of TV apps.

PONTE VERDA BEACH, Fla.—Facebook is hitting the links, as the PGA Tour has announced that it has come to an agreement for the social media company to distribute daily highlight packages to global users through Facebook Watch.

The PGA Tour will publish daily round recaps and player-specific highlights from more than 30 events on the PGA Tour schedule, including The Players Championship and the FedExCup Playoffs. The content will come from tournament telecasts, as well as from the PGA Tour Live OTT service.

Fans can follow the PGA Tour’s Facebook page to stay up to date with available content, which will be posted at the completion of each tournament round. The Tour will also have interactive elements like Facebook Lives and Facebook Watch Parties through its Facebook Group, The Gallery.

Available content will begin with the Farmers Insurance Open, which takes place starting Jan. 23 at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego.

The PGA Tour and Facebook had previously partnered to offer live streaming coverage of The Players Championship and FedExCup Playoffs.

LONDON—“Made-for-social” video content is rising in popularity, especially among younger viewers, and that demand is being met by many social platforms with the commissioning of projects. But traditional broadcasters are also attempting to get in on the action, often in a funding role, according to Ampere Analysis.

Based on research into the strategies of digital studios, Ampere has found that digital studio groups are diving further into video specifically aimed at social platforms. Since the middle of 2018, YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat have commissioned more than 200 digital originals, scripted and unscripted. 2020 will see the launch of another platform, Quibi, which has more than 80 projects of its own in development.

However, while digital studios are interested in creating content specifically for these platforms, there’s an ebb and flow to their ability to produce them. Following 44 projects commissioned in Q4 2018, only 10 titles were commissioned by the social players in Q1 2019; it would rise to 68 in Q3 2019.

“The nature of fast-evolving digital space requires that digital studios need to ensure long-term sustainable growth over short-term gains,” said Henry Beckwith, analyst at Ampere.

One source to help provide stabilization may be traditional broadcast entities. Ampere points out the incumbent broadcast groups have larger budgets than OTT for commissioned content. Add that with their desire to access younger audiences that are increasingly drawn to video on social platforms (Snapchat and Instagram have largest batch of young viewers, 78% and 63% of 18 to 34 year olds, respectively), and broadcasters are looking for ways in.

Digital studios are working with broadcasters, discovering talent and create or license IP to commercial and public broadcast groups. What will make this strategy successful, according to Ampere, is “spotting and securing social video personalities early and adopting formats that could be easily shifted to a broadcast environment.”

For more information, visit Ampere Analysis’ website.

LONDON—YouTube remains by far the most popular online video destination worldwide, garnering more than 63% of online video viewing, compared to its nearest competitor, Netflix, which nabs 39%, according to a new report from Ampere Analysis.

YouTube has the largest reach in all countries surveyed except the U.K. (BBC’s iPlayer) and China (iQiYi). South Africans view YouTube more than any other country by proportion, and with the exception of the U.K. and France, more than six in 10 in each country viewed a video on YouTube in June.

The third most popular video site, Facebook Watch, makes up just over a quarter (27%) of worldwide video views, Ampere said, adding that since Q3 2016, the number of U.S. and European viewers of video on Facebook have declined from 28% to 23% of internet respondents. Ampere says Netflix has benefited from Facebook’s decline, with the percentage of online viewers increasing from 22% to 37% during the same time period.

Ampere didn’t include Facebook’s Watch video service in its analysis. Facebook claimed last month that the number of monthly viewers to its Watch video service nearly doubled in the past six months to 140 million.

DVRs are more popular in Europe than in the U.S., with 41% using “catch up” services in June compared to just 13% in the U.S. SVoD, however, is more popular in the U.S., with 64% of Americans subscribing to VOD services compared to 50% in Europe.

Ampere based its analysis on 41,000 internet respondents in 20 markets in Q1 2019.

MENLO PARK, Calif.—A year after Facebook Watch was launched globally, the social media platform is reporting that the service is averaging 720 million people monthly, with more than 140 million people daily who spend a least one minute in Watch. It’s average time for daily visitors is more than 26 minutes.

Facebook Watch was designed to connect people as they watch videos, and Facebook says that it has introduced and will introduce ways for users to do this. Among some of its latest services is featuring groups centered on specific content appearing alongside videos, allowing for visitors to join conversations with other fans. New developments are also on their way, including ways to discover videos that are popular with friends and a section dedicated to co-watching experiences for shows or live videos.

Facebook is also expanding its ability for content creators, featuring the ability to have ad breaks in videos in more than 40 countries. New additions include Canada and upcoming support for the languages of Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Swedish and Telugu.

New content development is also key, per Facebook. It is partnering with global publishers in entertainment and sports, including Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1, the International Cricket Council, Australia’s Seven Studios and sporting leagues, as well as international sources for the News in Watch program.

Then there is the slate of Facebook original programming, with season and series premieres for “The Real World,” “Human Discoveries,” “Ball in the Family,” “The Birch,” “Sorry for Your Loss” and more. Facebook also launched a program in March to connect content creators and digital publishers that have resulted in a number of new shows that will debut in the coming months.

Facebook has announced the international launch of its Watch platform.

The tech giant revealed on a European press call with TVBEurope that it is also rolling out ad breaks as an open program to more countries around the world, starting with the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the US this week.

More countries will be added in September including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

Watch was introduced in the US a year ago to give Facebook users a dedicated platform to find their favourite shows and video creators, and to start conversations with friends, other fans, and even creators themselves.

Facebook has been gradually updating the look and feel of Watch to make the experience more social, and making it easier to see which videos friends have liked or shared, creating shows that have audience participation at their core.

With Watch, users can find the latest videos spanning entertainment, sports, news and more all in a personalised Watch feed. At the top of the Watch feed is the Watchlist, a customisable collection of recent videos from pages a user follows. Users can also save videos from a news feed if they don’t have time to watch it right away.

Facebook’s head of video Fidji Simo made it clear that the platform aims to build new video experiences that put people at the centre, giving them the ability to shape the direction of the content and enabling them to find new video experiences in their Watch feed, like Watch Parties.“Facebook Watch is different because it is built on the notion that video doesn’t have to be a passive experience, and can instead connect you with others,” said Simo. “With Watch we have built an interactive experience that gives you a new level of access and influence. You don’t just watch videos on your own, you can have a two-way conversation about the content with friends, other fans or even the creators themselves. You are truly part of the action.”

"With the global rollout of Watch, we're excited to bring a new distribution platform to our partners around the world, and to help eligible creators and publishers make money from their videos with ad breaks," added head of content and strategy Matthew Henick.

More than 50 million people every month in the US view videos for at least a minute in Watch, and total time spent watching videos in Watch has increased by 14x since the start of 2018.

Watch is now available globally on iOS and Android, and can be found in a user’s shortcuts bar or the “More” bookmark. The service is also available on Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Xbox One, and Oculus TV.

Oculus has launched Oculus TV, a new channel that serves as a hub to experience programming from Hulu, Showtime, MLB Live games and others, as well as esports via Facebook’s Watch video service. The service is available to users of Oculus Go, the company’s first standalone VR headset. Oculus Go, announced at Facebook's F8 conference last month, retails for $199 for 32GB of storage, $249 for 64GB.

What’s missing from the company’s announcement? Any mention of the words “virtual reality.” Instead, Oculus claims that the viewing experience on its new TV network for Oculus Go is equivalent to a 180-inch TV screen. The company said viewers can switch between live and on-demand content, from “The Daily Show” and “Late Night With Stephen Colbert” to Facebook Watch original shows. Content is also available from Pluto TV, Red Bull TV and Newsy, with the promise of “fan favorites” from ESPN to be added soon.

The Oculus TV app can be downloaded from the Oculus Store for free. 

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLA. –The PGA Tour and Facebook have reached an agreement awarding the social media giant rights to distribute more than 60 hours of exclusive live coverage on Saturdays and Sundays from eight tournaments leading up to the FedExCup Playoffs for the 2017-18 season.

“We are thrilled to add Facebook to an already impressive lineup of global digital and broadcast partners,” said Chris Wandell, vice president, media business development of the PGA Tour.

[Read: PGA Tour Launches OTT Channel On Xumo]

The coverage, produced under the PGA Tour Live brand, will be distributed via Facebook Watch within the United States and is free of charge to viewers. Similar to the PGA Tour’s subscription OTT service, Facebook Watch coverage will follow two groups that tee off in the morning of the third and final rounds. Coverage will include interactive elements, such as fan questions and comments.

The agreement also covers on-demand programming, including tournament previews, round recaps and extended player highlights, which will be available in the United States on Facebook Watch and around the world via the PGA Tour Live show page.

Coverage via Facebook Watch will begin June 23rd and continue the next day at the Travelers Championship. Other 2018 events include: Quicken Loans National; A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier; John Deere Classic; RBC Canadian Open; World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational; Wyndham Championship; and The Northern Trust.

Typically, coverage from the tournaments will start at 8:30 a.m. ET and end at the beginning of Golf Channel’s lead-in coverage.

With the conclusion of coverage of the featured groups on Facebook Watch, PGA Tour Live featured holes coverage will be streamed worldwide on a non-exclusive basis on Facebook. 

Facebook has begun trials of new video compression technology AV1.

The social networking site said in a blog post that the trial “allows engineers and the general public to view sample AV1 content today.”

Facebook is testing delivering AV1-encoded video over MPEG-DASH on Chrome Canary, an experimental version of the Chrome browser.

The initial trial is using an earlier version of AV1, but Facebook said it plans to switch to the official AV1 release version once major web browsers such as Chrome and Firefox have implemented the new codec.

Facebook also said AV1 has some caveats, as it requires longer encoding times than current alternatives because of the increased complexity.

To help to overcome the slow performance of the AV1 encoder, Facebook is using a “segment-based encoding approach” that splits the video into smaller segment files.

“In the context of distributed video encoding and processing, per-segment tasks are executed in parallel for every video segment of a given input video so that it allows us to speed up the overall AV1 encoding almost linearly with the number of tasks allocated to the encoding cluster,” Facebook engineers Daniel Baulig and Yu Liu said.

NEW YORK—Baseball season is almost here, and with it comes the traditions we all know and love; the smell of fresh cut crass, the crack of the bat, and a weekly game available on Facebook. The latter is a new addition to the 2018 baseball season, as MLB and Facebook are expanding the partnership they began in 2017 that will now see Facebook produce and broadcast a weekly game—25 in total—that will exclusively be distributed on Facebook Watch in the U.S. via the MLB Live show page.

The weekly afternoon games will be produced by MLB Network’s production team for Facebook Watch and will be available across supported devices, including mobile phones and connected televisions. MLB Network is planning to showcase new in-game production elements designed for watching, sharing and interacting on Facebook.

Specially curated content that goes along with each game broadcast will be produced and distributed by MLB, including on-demand highlight packages for all regular season games and club-specific weekly recap packages for all 30 teams. These will also be available on Facebook.

[Intel, MLB Close Three-Year Deal for VR Experiences]

Details on broadcast talent and social integrations will be announced at a later date.

The premiere of the weekly broadcast will be on April 4 with a matchup of the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets at 1:10 p.m. ET. The complete schedule for April has already been announced and is as follows: Milwaukee Brewers vs. St. Louis Cardinals, April 11 at 1:15 p.m.; Kansas City Royals vs. Toronto Blue Jays, April 18 at 4:07 p.m.; and Arizona Diamondbacks vs. Philadelphia Phillies, April 26 at 1:05 p.m. Each additional monthly broadcast schedule will be announced during the season.

Fans can add games to their Watchlists by following the MLB Live show page.

BURBANK, CALIF.—Before the first envelope is handed out at the Oscars this year—hopefully the correct one this time—fans can watch the stars arrive on the red carpet on Facebook. For the second year in a row, “The Oscars: All Access” will be live streamed by Facebook, with the content available on The Academy’s show page on Facebook Watch, The ABC Television Network Facebook page, Oscar.com and ABCNews.com.

The show is produced by the Academy and ABC, and with the live stream from Facebook it will offer viewers red carpet, backstage and audience footage, as well as live “look-ins” on the Oscar telecast. Additional features for those watching the live stream may include a digital autograph from stars on the red carpet; viewers can engage in conversation on the Oscars Movie Club page on Facebook; and the Academy show page on Facebook Watch will share special “The Oscars Insider” content leading up to the ceremony.

[Facebook to Live Stream Golden Globes Red Carpet]

“The Oscars: All Access” will be hosted by Sofia Carson, Chris Connelly, Ben Lyons, Andan Kirk and Wesam Keesh. The live stream will begin at 6:30 p.m ET on Sunday, March 4.

The 2017 live stream of “The Oscars: All Access” won an Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media Within an Unscripted Program.

The 90th Academy Awards will air on ABC at 8 p.m. ET on March 4.