Report: Facebook signs major deals for its live streaming service

Facebook Live is paying publishers and celebrities to help promote Facebook Live. The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed a document indicating that Facebook has signed more than 140 contracts for over $50 million. Seventeen of these amount to over $1 million.

No one at Facebook has made a statement regarding the nature of the deals, but a statement earlier by Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s vice president of global operations, speaks to the emphasis the company has placed on the Live product. According to Osofsky, a “broad set of partners” was invited to participate to see “what works and what doesn’t.” If they’ve done well with Live before, they were offered a deal. Past performance was paramount, as well as constant churn of Live videos to meet the expectations of the social network.

BuzzFeed is currently the highest-paid publisher through these contracts, receiving a little more than $3 million for videos produced between March 2016 and March 2017. The New York Times will also be receiving a little more than $3 million, and CNN will be receiving $2.5 million over the same time period.

Other participants include locations, such as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, internet celebs including Logan Paul, Andrew Bachelor and Lele Pons, sports team FC Barcelona and DJs Armin Van Buuren and Hardwell. Facebook page Tastemade will be producing more than 100 videos monthly and will be receiving about $1 million for all videos it will produce.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is confident this can help encourage the network’s users to check the site. According to Facebook, the average user of its service watches a live video three times longer than any other type of video.