Last season, Twitter had the rights to stream 10 Thursday Night Football games. Those were the games that aired on CBS and NBC. And overall, Twitter paid $10 million to stream those games not just to the United Sttates, but to an global audience. But the deal with the NFL to stream Thursday Night Football was only for one season and the league now has a decision to make.
The latest
Sports Business Journal says the NFL is aiming to have a new deal in place by the end of next month so advertising can be sold upfront in time for the new season.
Both the NFL and Twitter said they were pleased over how the streams performed (averaging 265,000 per game) and it helped to bring a younger audience plus more international streams as opposed to other packages.
Twitter steamed the games on multiple platforms including mobiles, connected TV devices, tablets and computers.
The NFL wants to reach younger audiences and it knows that mobiles is extremely important to connect to them.
Not only will Twitter be a player for the new TNF streaming contract, but expect Facebook which reportedly is close to a deal to stream one MLB game a week and Amazon to bid. But in addition to soctal and streaming media, the bid is open to traditional media companies.
We’ll see what happens when the NFL decides next month.
[Sports Businesss Journal (subscription req.)]
