Audibles will be limited to 140 characters, with Twitter on board to live-stream select Thursday Night Football games this fall.
As first reported by Bloomberg, the social-media service beat out the likes of Yahoo!, Amazon and Facebook (which reportedly took a knee last week) to land a plum contract with the NFL, allowing them to stream some TNF games online.
Twitter COO Adam Bain shared (via Twitter) that the deal covers 10 games, pre- and post-game shows and behind-the-scenes Periscopes.
The news comes two months after it was reported that CBS will split this season’s Thursday Night Football package with NBC, which each broadcaster hosting five games each (while the NFL Network of course simulcasts).
The streaming deal A) gives the NFL a new, direct line to “cord cutters” who no longer subscribe to cable, B) positions Twitter as a hub for programming content (because we needed another), and C) quiiiiiite possibly puts a nice chunk of change in the league’s coffers. (Already, the CBS/NBC arrangement reportedly upped the broadcast rights haul from $300 million to $450 million. Hashtag #Tou¢hdown, hashtag #TeenLife).
Twitter in turns aims to monetize its end of the partnership. “New Thursday Night Football deal is great for our Marketers, as Twitter controls some of games’ ad inventory,” Bain tweeted. “[It] will be amazing for Marketers to associate with this TNF content and reach audiences in the moment they are most receptive to hearing from brands.”
Details on what exactly a football game looks like on Twitter are TBA.
