Twitter has managed to sign an important deal with the National Football League giving it rights to exclusively live-stream as many as ten Thursday Night Football broadcasts worldwide in the next season, the companies said today.
According to Variety, Twitter will carry the games broadcast by NBC and CBS, to be simulcast on the NFL Network, too.
Free live-streams will leverage Twitter-owned Periscope.
In addition to the live games, Twitter will also stream in-game highlights from TNF and pre-game live broadcasts from players and teams before, during and after games.
“This is about transforming the fan experience with football,” said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “People watch NFL games with Twitter today. Now they’ll be able to watch right on Twitter Thursday nights.”
The streaming feeds will include ads sold by the TV networks. It’s curious that Twitter has managed to emerge victorious and win this deal against such bidders as Verizon, Amazon and Facebook, the latter refusing to inject ads into the streams.
For the 2016-17 NFL season, Verizon Wireless will continue to live-stream every game to smartphone subscribers in the United States, as per Variety. At one point, even Apple was briefly reported to have been in talks with the NFL to win those streaming rights.
Source: Variety