Huge changes are coming for sports fans on Facebook

World's largest stadium

Ben Kiely

Huge changes are coming for sports fans on Facebook

The way we consume and react to sports on social media may be about to change.

Facebook have launched Sports Stadium, a special hub dedicated solely to sports.

This new virtual area will act as a compliment to watching live sports. While you won’t be able to stream games live from the app, it will allow users to discuss everything occurs during matches as they happen with the 650 million fellow sports nuts on the site.

Users can access the Sports Stadium by searching events or matches in Facebook’s main app, in a similar way that the hashtag works on Twitter. From there you’ll be taken to a dashboard featuring four tabs.

Facebook Sports StadiumToday we’re launching the Facebook Sports Stadium, a dedicated place to experience sports in real-time with your friends and the world. Check out our product announcement here: http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/01/facebook-sports-stadium With 650 million sports fans, Facebook is the world’s largest stadium. People already turn to Facebook to celebrate, commiserate, and talk trash with their friends and other fans.Now we’ve built a place devoted to sports so you can get the feeling you’re watching the game with your friends even when you aren’t together.

Posted by Sports on Facebook on Wednesday, January 20, 2016

One of these will show play-by-play details, another collates all comments from your friends relevant to the sporting event. The third tab shows comments from verified commentators, players, and sports outlets while the final one will contain detailed stats for the event you’re watching.

The new feature is seen as an attempt to head off Twitter’s domination of the sporting sphere, with the rival social network stealing a march on Facebook when it comes to “second screening”.

Facebook Sports is starting off in USA just for American football on iOS, but they are expected to start rolling out other sports in stateside and eventually across the globe at a later, unconfirmed date on all platforms.

Speaking to Re/code, Facebook Stadium’s project manager, Steve Kafka said of the new feature:

“We think it can really enhance awareness. Maybe you weren’t paying attention and then you see your friends are having this discussion and that can pull you into the game.”

“We think that’s a win-win for everybody. It drives more eyeballs to what [our content partners] are already sharing.

Main image credit: Facebook