Facebook Live videos have been a little bit of a surprise success for the company. They were always bound to be big if only due to the amount of people that use Facebook daily, but they’ve become a very legitimate way of broadcasting in a very short space of time.

Now it looks like Facebook is putting more power behind its video effort as they have opened talks with television studios and producers to get them to create original content for Facebook to license, including scripted programs, game shows, and sports coverage.

It’s a very Facebook-answer to the question of how will they get more content on their site, as the social network is simply offering millions to the production companies to air their shows online rather than on traditional television.

Programming

Facebook has already been paying out for exclusive video content, with figures of around $1 million rumoured to be what they offer to major live streamers on their platform, but that figure pales in comparison to both traditional outlets and the likes of Netflix and Amazon pay for high-quality, tentpole programming.

Twitter has already an established presence around video streaming, with live NFL and Wimbledon streams this year. Facebook doesn’t want their videos to be just something you pass over in your news feed though, putting the emphasis on their growing video tab where any videos shared in your feed appear in a collated stream.

This could become a major part of Facebook’s ecosystem and draw to non-users if they get the original content they want, and become a big competitor to the current streaming giants of Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.

This new push is being led by Ricky Van Veen, one of the founders of comedy site College Humour who joined Facebook earlier this year.