Variety: NBC Taps TikTok Influencers to Grab Younger Viewers for NFL Games

Story from Variety:

A cadre of TikTok influencers will join NBC Sports on a massive three-day trek that takes them from Kansas City to Sao Paulo to Detroit, all in the name of boosting professional football to people who might not ordinarily think of traditional NBC-backed media as the place to see it.

With an extraordinary lineup of three NFL games in four days scheduled for later this week — part of the kickoff for the NFL’s 2024-2025 season –NBC will take seven social-media influencers across more than 10,000 miles so they can create content tied to three specific matches.

NBC and Peacock are slated to run Thursday night’s game pitting the Baltimore Ravens against the Kansas City Chiefs; Peacock will stream Friday night’s Green Bay Packers vs. Philadelphia Eagles from Sao Paulo; and NBC and Peacock will run Sunday’s Los Angeles Rams vs. Detroit Lions game on the season debut of “Sunday Night Football.”

“We want to reach GenZ and millennials, and we also want to bring in women as well,” says Lyndsay Signor, senior vice president of consumer engagement for NBC Sports, during an interview. “With all of the creators, we have a really diverse group,” and even if audiences aren’t die-hard NFL fans, she says, “this gives them an opportunity to really get a little bit of a taste of what we can offer at NBC.”

NBC Sports calls the promotion a “Transcontinental Tailgate.”

The NFL is arguably the biggest sport in the U.S., and it is coming off a season during which the bulk of its game telecasts represented the most-watched programming in the nation. At the same time, the league faces a specific challenge during an election year. Some news broadcasts may distract viewers from traditional leisure activities, such as watching football.

The social-media influencers taking part in the promotion include: Allison Kuch; Jack “Chef Cuso” Mancuso; Erika Priscilla; JoJo Sim; Austin Sprinz; Pierson Wodzynski; and Nate Wyatt. In Kansas City, “Saturday Night Live” cast member Heidi Gardner — a big fan of the Chiefs — will meet with the influencers and present challenges they will turn into content.

NBC Sports assembles the creator group after testing a similar experiment during the Paris Olympics. The Comcast-backed unit dispatched 27 influencers known for followings on Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, or Overtime, among other social-media venues, and asked them to provide a view on the athletic extravaganza that would be of interest to their fans. The idea, says Signor, was “to talk to people that maybe weren’t following” the Olympics, “or necessarily watching them in primetime.”

The hope is that reaching out to younger fans might spur not only ratings spikes on traditional TV, but, perhaps more importantly in the streaming era, potential new subscribers to Peacock.

The executive can envision assembling similar groups of digital natives to spur interest in other NBC Sports — so long as the ties between the influencers and the sports seem genuine. “When we try to shoehorn creators in just because they have scale,” the results aren’t as significant, Signor suggested. “We need to find the right kind of creator that not only has reach, but also the interest.”