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Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

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Re: Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

#21

Post by bluedino »

CrazyCatDog wrote: post #2

This is a huge deal for folks outside the US. Within the US, it's hard to imagine folks turning away from a television and onto a monitor/phone/tablet to watch football. Football feeds straight into the average American's robust average 4 hours of daily television viewing (1). Before you ask about cord-cutters, note that reliable numbers are relatively weak on that end (2). The original Twitter NFL Highlights deal se…

>> Within the US, it's hard to imagine folks turning away from a television and onto a monitor/phone/tablet to watch football.

Not really. So many of us have removed cable TV from our lives. It's not uncommon to see people at restaurants or work streaming live sports on a 4G device. I'll even pull up a stream on my second monitor instead of going in the living room to watch the game OTA.

Re: Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

#22

Post by theseatoms »

incongruity wrote: post #10

So, we'll be watching it in six second chunks? Play by play 140 characters at a time? I joke, but my point is actually that this feels very off brand for Twitter. Maybe for Periscope, but even there, it's about the first-person, crowd-sourced, "raw" and authentic perspective. It isn't about massively produced media circuses like pro-sports are. Sure, I see the value others have highlighted – it'll prop up the user ba…

It feels exactly "on brand" to me. Live events with massive audiences are Twitter's bread and butter (from a usage perspective, if not revenue).

And sure. It could fragment the userbase further. But why is that a negative development? And isn't that the nature of Twitter's userbase already?

Disclosure: I bought a few more shares this morning, after seeing the news.

Re: Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

#23

Post by pgodzin »

brandonmenc wrote: post #20

For anyone skeptical of this format, the comedian Norm Macdonald live tweets PGA golf - for hours at a time - to the joy of many. https://twitter.com/normmacdonald

Love Norm but not really relevant here. Twitter is going to have a live video stream of the game, not a feed of tweets. Different format.

Re: Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

#24

Post by erichocean »

mikeyouse wrote: post #16
sna1l wrote: post #5

If Twitter forces you to login to view this free stream, I feel like this could be significant for their user growth. If they are able to keep these users engaged by getting them started with users to follow, I think this could be very successful for them. The pricing is also very interesting. Rumors are around $10 million for all the games ( http://recode.net/2016/04/05/twitter-beats-amazon-verizon-fo... ). The othe…

When determining who made this deal happen and at such a good price for Twitter, it's worth noting that Anthony Noto (Twitter's current CFO) used to be the CFO of the NFL -- I think he might have had a bit of influence.

Probably has some inside knowledge on the NFL's own financials, too.

Re: Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

#25

Post by wtvanhest »

theseatoms wrote: post #22
incongruity wrote: post #10

So, we'll be watching it in six second chunks? Play by play 140 characters at a time? I joke, but my point is actually that this feels very off brand for Twitter. Maybe for Periscope, but even there, it's about the first-person, crowd-sourced, "raw" and authentic perspective. It isn't about massively produced media circuses like pro-sports are. Sure, I see the value others have highlighted – it'll prop up the user ba…

It feels exactly "on brand" to me. Live events with massive audiences are Twitter's bread and butter (from a usage perspective, if not revenue). And sure. It could fragment the userbase further. But why is that a negative development? And isn't that the nature of Twitter's userbase already? Disclosure: I bought a few more shares this morning, after seeing the news.

They are also in the ads business and can sell across both platforms.

Re: Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

#26

Post by osweiller »

CrazyCatDog wrote: post #2

This is a huge deal for folks outside the US. Within the US, it's hard to imagine folks turning away from a television and onto a monitor/phone/tablet to watch football. Football feeds straight into the average American's robust average 4 hours of daily television viewing (1). Before you ask about cord-cutters, note that reliable numbers are relatively weak on that end (2). The original Twitter NFL Highlights deal se…

In the US this deal is effectively irrelevant because the host network of the TNF game already has digital streaming rights. e.g. if the game is on CBS, CBS is also streaming it online, as they did last year. Twitter can also serve US customers the stream, but they're carrying CBS' stream, including all CBS ads, so they effectively are providing a free distribution network for the networks, presumably just to draw users to the service (though I fail to see how streaming video has anything to do with Twitter, every service is trying to be everything to everyone).

Outside of the US is where this deal has real relevance, because the US networks often geo-restrict their feeds. Though again it will be carrying the US network feed and ads.

Which is why Twitter "won" this bid with only $10M. It isn't really a big deal.

Re: Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

#27

Post by whatok »

noer wrote: post #17
lbotos wrote: post #4

Has twitter ever streamed anything before? Are they gonna partner with some streaming provider to actually make it work?

There actually was a pretty neat use-case for live streaming via periscope last year. I'm a pretty big hockey fan (to the point where I follow beat writers of teams I don't consider myself a fan of). Last season there started to be a trend of writers using periscope to live-stream warmups and postgame interviews. It was neat to get that level of access, despite the video quality not being great. About a month after p…

> About a month after people started doing it, the league stepped in to say that live streams constituted "broadcast without consent" and most people stopped doing it.

Think this is a very overlooked part of the deal. I'd imagine NFL will not give explicit permission but look the other way if people post videos on Twitter. Very powerful for increasing interaction and introducing people who are new to the service (follow _____ for ____ games)

Re: Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

#28

Post by fernandotakai »

koolba wrote: post #8
CrazyCatDog wrote: post #2

This is a huge deal for folks outside the US. Within the US, it's hard to imagine folks turning away from a television and onto a monitor/phone/tablet to watch football. Football feeds straight into the average American's robust average 4 hours of daily television viewing (1). Before you ask about cord-cutters, note that reliable numbers are relatively weak on that end (2). The original Twitter NFL Highlights deal se…

> This is a huge deal for folks outside the US. What makes you think you'll be able to stream this from an IP address outside of the US?

you can currently buy NFL's gamepass outside the us (i paid mine in brazilian reais) and stream every single game.

Re: Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

#30

Post by cvwright »

incongruity wrote: post #10

So, we'll be watching it in six second chunks? Play by play 140 characters at a time? I joke, but my point is actually that this feels very off brand for Twitter. Maybe for Periscope, but even there, it's about the first-person, crowd-sourced, "raw" and authentic perspective. It isn't about massively produced media circuses like pro-sports are. Sure, I see the value others have highlighted – it'll prop up the user ba…

> So, we'll be watching it in six second chunks?

If it's HLS or DASH, then pretty much, yeah. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...

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