Fansided

Twitter wins rights to stream Thursday Night NFL games

By Jason Parker

Jan 23, 2015; Glendale, AZ, USA; General view of NFL shield logo at midfield of University of Phoenix Stadium in advance of Super Bowl XLIX between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 23, 2015; Glendale, AZ, USA; General view of NFL shield logo at midfield of University of Phoenix Stadium in advance of Super Bowl XLIX between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports /
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The NFL confirmed Tuesday that Twitter has won the rights to live stream the broadcast of the NFL’s Thursday Night games from CBS and NBC.

Last season, the NFL made history by having a live stream of a regular season NFL game, as the matchup between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars was broadcast in America on the website Yahoo.com.

In 2016, the NFL was taking bids from many media outlets to live stream their package of 10 Thursday Night games being broadcast by CBS and NBC. While companies like Facebook dropped out of the running in recent days, it appears there is a winner.

Get your hashtags ready, because Twitter has won the rights to live stream this year’s action in the middle of the week by the two over-the-air broadcast networks. The story was first reported by Bloomberg.com and later confirmed by the NFL:

"The social-media company was said to be bidding against a slate of heavyweights including Verizon Communications Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.Terms of the deal weren’t immediately available. Last season, Yahoo paid $17 million to stream a game from London, which was played at 9:30 a.m.eastern time and also broadcast on network TV in the teams’ home markets…In the most recent broadcast deal, CBS Corp. and Comcast Corp.’s NBC each paid about $45 million a game for five Thursday night contests for the 2016 and 2017 seasons.Twitter would probably broadcast the games as a part of the six-month-old Moments feature, which could package a live event alongside commentary, behind-the-scenes tweets, and other content."

The deal does not include the games that will be broadcast exclusively by the NFL Network, which has a partnership with Verizon to stream those games on mobile devices. The NFL Network partners with CBS and NBC to produce their package of games, which will also be simulcast on the cable network.

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