The NCAA March Madness Tournament tipped off this afternoon with Princeton and Notre Dame on the court, and Snapchat is capturing the streams of photos and videos fans take during the tourney.
As part of Snapchat’s partnership with Turner (which has multimedia rights to March Madness), the app will publish more than 30 “Our Stories” during the three weeks of games. Our Stories—previously known as Live Stories—are the collections of live content collected at events. Each arena for the 64 participating colleges will be wrapped with themed geofilters that fans can lay on top of their photos and videos.
Examples of Our Stories include one called “Trash Talk Story,” where students can submit posts of themselves riffing on competing schools. The content will also show “the craziest” moments from games and include footage from inside the arenas and at parties and events on college campuses.
NCAA sponsor Capital One is running full-screen Snap Ads within Our Stories that prompt users to swipe up to watch a video or play a mobile game. The brand also created a sponsored lens that will run April 2-3. According to Snapchat, it’s the first time a brand has run back-to-back sponsored lenses—typically, they run for 24 hours before they disappear.
Snapchat will make its way to TV, too. Short, on-air Turner segments will encourage viewers to share photos and videos on Snapchat. The promos will include Snapcodes—much like QR codes—that viewers can scan with their phones to unlock exclusive filters.
