META Meta Platforms Inc

By Steven Perlberg and Deepa Seetharaman 

Facebook Inc. is paying an array of media companies and celebrities to create videos for its live-streaming service and has signed nearly 140 contracts totaling more than $50 million, according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The social network's partners vary widely. It includes established media outfits like CNN and the New York Times; digital publishers like Vox, Tastemade, Mashable and the Huffington Post; and celebrities including Kevin Hart, Gordon Ramsay, Deepak Chopra and NFL quarterback Russell Wilson.

The value of individual contracts varies widely, with 17 worth more than $1 million, according to the document. The document isn't a comprehensive accounting of all of Facebook's dealings with video creators, but it shows the broad scope of the tech giant's efforts to promote its nascent Facebook Live product.

"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," Justin Osofsky, Facebook's vice president of global operations and media partnerships, said in a statement.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is betting big on live videos to encourage the social network's 1.65 billion monthly users to keep checking the service. The company still is determining how it will monetize the video service through ads. Encouraging publishers to produce a steady stream of high quality content is seen as a way to help get the initiative off the ground.

Most publishers -- traditional and digital -- already are pouring resources into online video to capture the attention of their audiences and grab high advertising prices. Facebook is a major driver of traffic to their properties. Becoming one of its live-streaming partners in the early going will give their videos enormous exposure, and could be lucrative once selling ads in the platform is allowed.

The highest-paid publisher on the document reviewed by the Journal is BuzzFeed, slated to receive $3.05 million for broadcasting live between March 2016 and March 2017. Just behind BuzzFeed is the New York Times, which is to receive $3.03 million for a 12-month deal. CNN is third, with a $2.5 million contract.

In March, Facebook said it would start paying some creators to use its live-streaming product as part of an early beta test, and some publishers had acknowledged having such arrangements in place. But the document reviewed by the Journal is the most comprehensive list so far of participating content providers and their specific financial dealings with Facebook.

Facebook invited publishers to be part of the program based, in part, on their track record with live video, Mr. Osofsky said. Among other factors, Facebook also looked for public figures who were able to "easily produce and test a variety of live programming," be it by breaking news or conducting interviews with interesting people.

The contract values are based on publishers' popularity on Facebook and the number of broadcasts they are willing to stream, according to people familiar with the terms of the deals. Some contracts include requirements related to the length of individual broadcasts; in other cases, additional payouts are available to publishers who exceed their minimum requirements.

The list reviewed by the Journal also includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art and American Museum of Natural History in New York; internet celebrities like Logan Paul, Andrew Bachelor and Lele Pons; dance music DJs Armin Van Buuren and Hardwell; and sports teams such as FC Barcelona.

Food-centric web video specialist Tastemade, which in April announced it would produce more than 100 Facebook Live shows a month, is set to receive about $1 million from Facebook for videos produced in a 12-month period ending in March 2017.

The potential power of Facebook's platform has been evident in early experiments. In April, two BuzzFeed employees streamed a Facebook Live video showing them placing rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded. It was Facebook's most-watched live video, until it was beaten out by Facebook user Candace Payne, who in May filmed herself in her car, laughing uproariously over a noise-making Chewbacca mask.

As of June 21, the nearly 45-minute watermelon video was viewed 10.8 million times; Ms. Payne's four-minute video has been viewed 157.6 million times.

Live videos are intended to be exclusive to the Facebook Live platform. Based on early testing, Facebook has said it found that the average user watches live video three times longer than other types of video.

Write to Steven Perlberg at steven.perlberg@wsj.com and Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 21, 2016 15:22 ET (19:22 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.