NBCUniversal sent formal requests for proposals to top social platforms, inviting them to outline new potential partnership strategies ahead of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games. 

This comes as the company continues to see viewers turn to streaming and digital video to watch the Olympics. 

The RFP resulted in submissions from top players including Snap, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and newly rebranded Meta, which responded to the request jointly on behalf of Facebook and Instagram.

Some platforms both put forth "localized" elements that range from hyping up athletes' hometowns to deploying Olympic-related hubs in-platform, according to an NBCU spokesperson familiar with the proposal process. At least one participant also emphasized “connective ecosystems” that may take audiences on and off any given platform fluidly.

“This wasn’t a room of individuals thinking about a transaction, it was a group of people completely committed to transformation—with the insights and energy and collaborative mindset to prove it,” the NBCU spokesperson said of the presentations, which were conducted both in-person in Los Angeles and virtually. “Seeing that partnership and trust in action was an incredibly powerful image, and it underscored what we’ve long known to be true about this industry: great minds don’t just think alike—they think together.”

Formal presentations have largely wrapped and decisions on the partnerships will be announced in the coming weeks, they confirmed.

The winning submissions won’t just be one-offs for Beijing; they will also be implemented and adapted for Paris 2024, Milano Cortina 2026 and beyond. NBCU has retained the exclusive U.S. broadcasting rights to the Olympics through at least 2032 thanks to an extension of a deal its parent company, Comcast, originally struck with the International Olympic Committee 10 years ago.

NBCU’s Olympic RFP comes after months of extending olive branches to companies in the media, commerce and measurement industries, among others, in a wide-net approach to scaling its capabilities “even with the so-called ‘competition,’” Linda Yaccarino,  chairman of global advertising and partnerships, wrote in a blog post published this morning.

“Partnership. It’s how we can amplify everything we do to transform this industry. Because only partnership companies will be equipped to adapt and innovate quickly, and drive change for the entire ad-supported industry,” she wrote.

In the post, Yaccarino announced NBCU's “#OurPartnershipCommitment,” a pledge to remain open to collaboration, to never accept or reject any partnership proposal automatically, and to encourage its industry peers to do the same.

And partnerships are expected to be the central theme of its One22 industry conference in March. 

This idea of partnerships is an extension of NBCU's previous efforts around measurement. The company stood up its Measurement Innovation Forum—backed by participating holding companies, independent agencies, top advertisers and more—in pursuit of perfecting media measurement for the post-Nielsen monopoly world, and is also collaborating with the VAB’s Measurement Innovation Task Force.

It also issues an RFP this summer as it looks for new measurement partners. Since then it has heard back from more than 80 potential measurement partners for both TV and streaming including Nielsen, Comscore, VideoAmp, Conviva, Data Plus Math and IBM with Watson AI. NBCU has said its goal is not to find a full-fledged Nielsen replacement or identify just one exclusive measurement partner.

In commerce, NBCU announced this week a new shoppable push for Black Friday and the Christmas gift-buying season, creating a virtual Bravo-inspired store in partnership with augmented reality retail company Obsess, as well as a limited shoppable mini-series it’s making with social media influencer Remi Bader.

And just this morning, NBCU announced its latest partnership with “conversational media” company Holler, to explore and expand advertising options in the relatively untapped digital messaging sphere. The deal will kick off with a suite of shareable stickers based on a wide array of NBCU intellectual property that’ll be accessible via Venmo, using Holler AI to suggest relevant images based on a user’s payment notes.