Twitter will stream 10 games broadcast by NBC and CBS, and simulcast on the NFL Network.
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Dan Rose, vice-president of partnership at Facebook, had previously confirmed to Variety that Facebook was in advanced talks with the NFL to get live streaming rights for “Thursday Night Football” games. In addition, the National Football League states that users will also enjoy access to in-game highlights from TNF and pre-game Periscope broadcasts with players and teams.
The NFL has experimented with social media before, partnering with Snapchat past year to allow users to share their experiences at different stadiums.
The terms of the deal were not announced, but technology news website Re/code, citing people familiar with the bidding process, reported that Twitter had paid less than $US10 million. That’s compared to ESPN paying more than $111 million per game for Monday Night Football and the almost $20 million that Yahoo shelled out to stream just one game last season. The announcement was made by commissioner Roger Goodell via his personal Twitter account, alongside a six-minute video recapping the entire 2015 season. Well, they finally seem to have hit upon the answer that works for them, as the company has partnered with Twitter to deliver those games to even more fans.
According to Noto, the deal will attract more young people to Twitter and act as the start point for a whole new wave of video deals that will cover everything from sports to news content to entertainment. “Twitter recognizes it must expand its business model, and this is another sign it sees itself as not only a communications platform, but as a media company”.
NFL spokesman Alex Riethmiller confirms to NPR that Twitter’s bid was, in fact, not the highest that the league received.
The NFL Network-only Thursday games are not part of the deal.
Twitter has gotten into online content streaming and begun with one of the most coveted associations of an insanely popular game. In January, CBS and NBC reportedly paid roughly $450 million combined for the rights to broadcast the same ten games.
“For Twitter, it basically the cost of two Super Bowl spots”, said Shaw, a former SVP of distribution and marketing for the NFL Network.
The NFL has been looking into ways to update and widen the scope of their Thursday Night Footballprogramming for a few months now.
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Twitter, of course, must now figure out a way to monetize their broadcasted games through advertising and that’s something the company seems to have a hard time doing in general when it comes to their platform.
