• by Colin Kirkland , 8 hours ago

As the National Football League prepares to kick off its upcoming season, TikTok aims to expand the league’s presence across its platform via a multiyear partnership, offering advertisers new opportunities to tap into NFL content.

Building on past partnership deals with the NFL, TikTok will add additional in-app experiences via the platform’s sports-specific GamePlan hub, which invites leagues, teams, and broadcasters to build their own presence in the app for interested fans.

TikTok’s “Pro Events” feature -- launched this past June -- will now apply to the NFL via a dedicated fan hub expected to go live in the coming weeks, allowing users to engage with other fans, explore trending videos, see curated creator feeds, and partake in tasks that deliver fan incentives. 

The multiyear partnership is also designed so that brands can place ads alongside premium NFL and NFL club content via the platform Pulse Premiere ad format. 

As of 2024, 59% of TikTok users indicate that watching sports content on TikTok is often more entertaining than the actual games themselves, while posts using the #NFL tag increased by 32% over the past year.

Over the past few years, live sports coverage has become more popular on TikTok, with major sports organizations and traditional broadcasters forging partnerships with the video-sharing service, prioritizing user-generated content.

Specific sports and teams are seeing massive engagement increases on the app, including the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, which amassed 400 million views across its various TikTok accounts last year, with some posts increasing over 1600% YoY.

As competing video-sharing platforms like YouTube dominate larger portions of traditional sports broadcasting, TikTok is continuing to invest in behind-the-scenes influencer-style coverage while forging partnerships with professional sports leagues and teams, including the NBA and WNBA, ATP, Major League Soccer, Aston Martin's Formula One team, the PGA Tour, the British Olympics and Paralympics teams, the New York Yankees and more.

As the season commences, TikTok users can search “NFL” in the platform’s main search bar during the football season to access the official NFL hub to see live scores and schedules, link to game viewing options, and see official sponsored content.