Facebook made deals with more than 140 celebrities and media companies, agreeing to pay them to use Facebook Live.
According to the Wall Street Journal, among the celebrities Facebook is paying to use the live streaming feature are included NFL player Russell Wilson, Seattle Seahawks, Deepak Chopra, actor Kevin Hart, Gordon Ramsay and many others. Among the media companies that entered the deal are included the New York Times, CNN, Gawker Media, Mashable and BuzzFeed.
Gizmodo reports that Facebook is focusing on its Live feature in order to compete to other social media networks. For instance, according to the Verge, Twitter is launching its "celebs-only" app, to keep important people safe from the vast majority of users.
Facebook, however, will capitalize the advertising potential of celebrities' live streams. The live streaming platform will become a significant source of cash for media companies.
At the moment, the giant social network is paying over $50 million to celebrities and publishers to produce content for Facebook Live. The terms of each deal varies.
Under those contracts, celebs and publishers agree to use Facebook Live in order to produce a set number of broadcasts. How much a publisher is paid for these broadcasts depends on how many videos they agree to make and how big their audience is.
For example, the most valuable deal is with BuzzFeed, which gets $3.05 million. At least 17 other deals are worth more than $1 million. Other deals involve institutions such as the the American Museum of Natural History in New York and YouTube stars.
According to Mashable, Facebook opened up the Live platform to all its users earlier this year. The social media giant has high hopes for its live streaming platform. Since Facebook plans to sell ads against its video streams, the current deals with celebs and publishers are used to jumpstart the overall engagement with the service.
