Facebook really wants its live streaming service, Facebook Live, to take off. To that end, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook has signed on nearly 140 media companies and celebrities to create videos for Facebook Live.
According to the reports, Facebook has agreed to make payments to video creators totaling more than USD 50 million. Some of these companies and celebrities includes big name new outfits like CNN and the New York Times, digital outfits such as Mashable and the Huffington Post, and celebrities like Kevin Hart and Gordon Ramsay.
The Wall Street Journal’s documents shows that the value of the individual contracts varies widely, with 17 of those contracts being valued at more than USD 1 million. Currently, the highest-paid publisher is BuzzFeed, which is slated to receive USD 3.05 million for broadcasting live between March 2016 and March 2017.
“We wanted to invite a broad set of partners so we could get feedback from a variety of different organizations about what works and what doesn’t,” says Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Operations and Media partnerships. Needless to say, Facebook is aiming to cut itself a slice of the digital video pie, a space which is mainly dominated by YouTube thus far.