Twitter is set to be this destination for sports fans on Thursday nights; the signing of a partnership with the NFL gives the social network exclusive streaming rights of NFL Thursday Night Football.
A total of 10 games will be live streamed on Twitter for free throughout the 2016 NFL regular season. The games will also be broadcast on NBC, CBS, and the NFL Network as the football league successfully achieves “tri-cast” distribution across broadcast TV, cable TV, and the internet. Exclusive to Twitter broadcasts will include in-game highlights, and pre-game Periscope broadcasts.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stated in an official announcement that Twitter was chosen to be the exclusive partner due to the nature of how live events unfold on Twitter, as well as the “massive” amount of NFL-related conversation on the network.
A report from Bloomberg indicates Twitter beat out other major competitors for streaming rights, including Verizon, Yahoo, Amazon, and Facebook. What’s more is Twitter reportedly paid less for the rights than others were offering.
This has the potential to boost Twitter’s daily active users, and overall user count, if football fans end up flocking to the social network to connect with others and consume some of the exclusive content.
Thursday Night Football returns this fall; between now and then expect plenty of hype on Twitter.
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