Starting this season, it also becomes the first screen. You’ll try this Twitter experiment.
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Why, on Twitter of course!
The game streamed just as it appeared on CBS, commentary and all, only with a few-second delay. Twitter is trying to appeal to advertisers by capitalizing on its strength as a real-time service and the growing trend of cord-cutting viewers. Previously, the National Football League live-streamed an October 2015 game on Yahoo. “We did not take the highest bidder on the table”, Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s executive vice president of media, said in April.
This was the next logical step, and since Facebook was busy funding internet access to developing parts of the world, Twitter stepped right in.
The games can be watched in any country where Twitter operates except Canada, because the country has a separate TV rights contract with the NFL.
Wait so how does this work, exactly? This year’s obstacle to be overcome by Ryan’s emotional pull: a bad Bills offense against a Jets defense that sacked Andy Dalton seven times last week and sees Sheldon Richardson back after a one-game suspension. A number of tweets exclaimed that this was the future of Twitter, and others urged the company to show more live content (from awards shows such as the ESPYs to additional sports streams). It’s the same team behind HBO Now, PlayStation Vue, and the WWE Network.
The timeline itself was also the subject of much confusion, as active users could not figure out how it was curated – our guess is that it included all the tweets that contained the #TNF hashtag and talk of the game.
“Others have live-streaming and social but the intersection of live streaming and user social interaction and community for sports arrived last night”.
Not during the game, no.
The NFL’s grand experiment with Twitter begins Thursday night, when an actual game will be live streamed by the social media outlet.
But Twitter will have its own pre-game, halftime, and post-game commentary happening via its live streaming video app Periscope.
National Football League players themselves took note of the broadcast as well. The game can also be seen on Twitter’s “Moments” feature. “For all these (social) platforms, they’re looking at video and wondering how they’re going to keep consumers’ attention”.
“Twitter for many years now has been throwing darts at the wall and seeing what hits”, Verna said.
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Twitter will livestream CBS’s broadcast for the first five Thursday Night games and NBC’s for the final five.
