NBC Expands Its Olympics Partnership With Facebook

NBC and Facebook are building upon their Olympics partnership.

The two companies have expanded their collaboration to include video content for the social media site to help promote next month's Winter Olympics from Sochi, Russia. The first feature, about the friendship between short track speed racer J.R. Celski and rapper Macklemore, debuted Thursday.

The two companies first partnered with the 2012 Summer Olympics from London.

The NBC Olympics Page on Facebook will also allow for users to ask questions directly to NBC's figure skating commentator Sarah Hughes during that sport's primetime coverage.

NBCUniversal has planned for more than 1000 hours to digital coverage (including live coverage of every event except for the opening ceremonies) for the upcoming Games, which begin Feb. 7.

“Building off of our successful collaboration for the London Olympics, we have expanded our relationship to better serve Olympic fans’ insatiable appetite for Games’ content,” said Gary Zenkel, president, NBC Olympics. “All with an eye on driving viewership to our multi-platform coverage, we will use our unique access to all aspects of the Sochi Games to ignite the Olympic conversation and engagement on Facebook.”

As with the two companies' previous collaboration in 2012, the NBC Olympics Facebook page will feature news, online polls, photo galleries, trivia and shareable images. The social media site will also again work with NBC Olympics editorial teams from Sochi to produce social media segments and other social integrations to air across NBC Olympics’ multi-platform coverage.