Facebook bulked up its role as a prominent player in the sports media space, launching its first-ever sports product, entitled Facebook Sports Stadium. The platform will look to harness its 650 million sports fans with a real-time experience that will blend comments from friends; posts and commentary from experts, including teams, leagues and journalists; live scores, stats and a play-by-play; as well as information such as tune-in times and location. The product will cross all sports and is launching just ahead of this weekend’s NFL Conference Championships before expanding to basketball, soccer, and other sports in the US with other countries on deck later.

“Third party research says that Facebook is already the primary second screen for television broadcasts, including live sports events,” said Dan Reed, Facebook’s Head of Global Sports Partnerships. “When you combine this along with the inherently social nature of sports, it results in the massive real-time global conversations we are seeing on Facebook around major sporting events, such as the 350 million people who connected on Facebook during the World Cup, or the 65 million unique people who joined the social conversation during last year’s Super Bowl. The Facebook Sports Stadium is designed to further enhance this second screen experience on Facebook by giving sports fans the feeling they’re watching the game with their friends in real-time, even when they’re not together.”