The social media platform will share rights with three networks.
USA Today Sports / Reuters
The NFL will stream Thursday Night Football games live on Twitter, the league announced Tuesday.
Twitter will share broadcast rights with NFL Network, as well as CBS and NBC, which have five games each.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell broke a nearly two-year hiatus from Twitter to announce the partnership on the platform.
In a statement, the commissioner said:
"Twitter is where live events unfold and is the right partner for the NFL as we take the latest step in serving fans around the world live NFL football. There is a massive amount of NFL-related conversation happening on Twitter during our games and tapping into that audience, in addition to our viewers on broadcast and cable, will ensure Thursday Night Football is seen on an unprecedented number of platforms this season."
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, whose platform has struggled to show growth of new users, said the partnership "is about transforming the fan experience with football."
"People watch NFL games with Twitter today. Now they'll be able to watch right on Twitter Thursday nights."
The league experimented with broadcasting a Buffalo Bills–Jacksonville Jaguars game on Yahoo last season, which the league deemed a success. It had been reported earlier this week that the NFL was in talks with Facebook to stream Thursday Night Football, but Twitter won out.
Thursday Night Football, which was added to the schedule in 2006, has been widely recognized as an inferior product to the Sunday slate of games. Players often have only four days to recover from the previous week's game, and coaches have less time to prepare for the matchup.
from BuzzFeed - Sports http://ift.tt/1ST4KCg
