Available on Twitter’s platform worldwide, Thursday’s match was the first of 10 games the microblogging site plans to stream as it seeks to make itself a force in mobile video with live events.
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Others suggested Twitter stream more live sporting events. Twitter also released an app for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Microsoft’s Xbox One on Wednesday so fans could broadcast the game on a bigger screen.
Most users praised the service and shared their excitement over the new way to watch games.
“Honestly, watching football on Twitter just means Twitter is the only thing I need in my life”, said Twitter user @_Levantine.
Nevertheless, it seemed that National Football League fans appreciated the streaming partnership with Twitter.
Cablevision subscribers can stream the game on CBS.com or the CBS app.
After months of speculation regarding its format, Twitter’s live-stream turned out to be a smooth, high-quality transmission offered in the same layout as was presented during its Wimbledon highlights broadcast. Canada is one of the few countries without access to the games because of a separate broadcast agreement. Twitter somehow bumbled its core tweeting function by making it nearly impossible to reply to or expand a tweet from the accompanying timeline without interrupting the stream.
‘The quality is better than my HD TV, but it being delayed stinks, ‘ wrote Twitter user DCBlueStar (DCBlueStar).
About 15.2 million viewers watched at least part of the game on Yahoo, while a total of 2.3 million people tuned into Thursday’s game or pregame show on Twitter for at least three seconds, according to the NFL.
The game was seen by an average of 15.4 million viewers on CBS and NFL Network. Twitter is looking to tap into a percentage of those viewers, along with its 313 million users, to send out tweets on the games that will be streamed on the platform.
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The deal is a sign that the National Football League is keeping up with the times by ensuring that games are available across multiple platforms. However advertisers are sceptical about how successful this will be, as the viewing base will be different to that of the TV audience, as typically older people tend to have larger disposable incomes would use the TV network coverage, whereas younger people who tend to have smaller disposable incomes would be using the free livestream.
