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Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

npr.org

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

#51

Post by arprocter »

dkrich wrote: post #38
arprocter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo did surprisingly well last season. IIRC they didn't make you sign up to watch

The Yahoo numbers posted in the article are a bit misleading because the London game was not available to watch on cable television in the U.S., so you were basically forced to watch it online, which is why Yahoo would pay such a large amount of money (and why their viewership was so high) to broadcast one game. Twitter, by comparison, is broadcasting the Thursday Night game alongside several other channels. I'd gues…

Sorry - by 'well' I meant that the stream wasn't stuttery garbage.

Good point about the Yahoo game being exclusive - it'll be interesting to see how the viewing figures pan out

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

#53

Post by cheeze »

gdulli wrote: post #35
jrcii wrote: post #31

Live sports moving online would be the final nail in the coffin of the cable television industry.

Streaming is a poor user experience compared to cable with a good DVR. In some ways it hits sports especially hard. Streaming is inherently rewind-unfriendly, that's something you want more often with sports. The whole smooth rewind/pause/fast-forward ability is a priority for me and would keep me on a Tivo forever. Even on a local bluray it's less convenient, with streaming it's a dealbreaker. Also, streaming is inh…

FWIW YoutTube streaming allows rewinds/pausing/fast forwarding and it works pretty well. I far prefer it to a Tivo.

I agree with you about the network connection quality though.

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

#54

Post by rmason »

I heard it explained that the reason that Twitter got the nod was because the NFL was concerned about losing young viewers because they were cable cutters.

If this logic is correct you can expect the NBA, NHL, MLB and NASCAR to cut deals with Twitter. This is a direction that I didn't expect Twitter to go.

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

#55

Post by AndrewKemendo »

rmason wrote: post #54

I heard it explained that the reason that Twitter got the nod was because the NFL was concerned about losing young viewers because they were cable cutters. If this logic is correct you can expect the NBA, NHL, MLB and NASCAR to cut deals with Twitter. This is a direction that I didn't expect Twitter to go.

If that is the case, then they would do better to be on Snapchat.

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

#56

Post by timdellinger »

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the networks usually provide the commentary and coverage? Does this mean that Twitter will provide the sportscasters?

And does this mean that Twitter gets to sell advertising on the stream (commercial breaks, on-screen ads)? Twitter should be able to do some extremely targeted advertising...

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

#57

Post by Paul-ish »

This will give Twitter an potentially useful combination of data and streaming rights.

Imagine watching the game on twitter, and you see an amazing play happen. You would be able to tweet about the play right away, because there is a text box near the video. Tweeting reactions is nothing new, but twitter doesn't know where in the game viewers are when they write their reaction tweets. With this new setup twitter knows what play you are talking about, because it is watching you watch the game. It is easy to see where you are in the stream.

They could automate the process of creating a highlights reel, featuring the most re-tweeted tweets as commentary.

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

#58

Post by at-fates-hands »

jat850 wrote: post #49
at-fates-hands wrote: post #29

"Twitter also has a former NFL executive in its ranks: The company's chief financial officer previously held the same position at the league." Yeah, no conflict of interest there huh?

I'm not super well versed in legal issues, but can conflict of interest be a true concern in two privately-held companies? (I'm not challenging your sentiment as much as I am genuinely asking out of curiosity/lack of knowledge.)

It's different from organization to organization. In this case, it would be easy to say the preferential treatment granted to a former employee (even though they had higher bids from other companies) could be deemed a conflict of interest.

From the NFL's own Compliance Plan:

Generally speaking, a conflict of interest arises when an employee has a competing interest or loyalties that are, or could be, at odds with each other. These competing interests may occur as the result of engaging in outside or other personal activities, or due to personal relationships.

The personal relationships between the former NFL employee and the current employee in that same position could easily be seen as a conflict of interest.

You can read the rest of the PDF here: http://www.thesportsesquires.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/...

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

#59

Post by jeffmould »

gdulli wrote: post #35
jrcii wrote: post #31

Live sports moving online would be the final nail in the coffin of the cable television industry.

Streaming is a poor user experience compared to cable with a good DVR. In some ways it hits sports especially hard. Streaming is inherently rewind-unfriendly, that's something you want more often with sports. The whole smooth rewind/pause/fast-forward ability is a priority for me and would keep me on a Tivo forever. Even on a local bluray it's less convenient, with streaming it's a dealbreaker. Also, streaming is inh…

I have been streaming a lot more recently using Comcast streaming. The pros is I can watch live TV, pause/stop/rewind, and catch up on shows. The cons, is that their quality is crap about 75% of the time. Lags, hiccups, poor video/audio quality, and sometimes it just outright refuses to work. The other con is that it doesn't carry the full array of their channels, but that really isn't a big deal to me.

What I don't understand is given they are a cable company and have the infrastructure in place, you would think their quality would be superior or at least equal to other services. Instead it seems they spend more time and money bitching about other services and not trying to make theirs the best.

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

#60

Post by macspoofing »

gdulli wrote: post #35
jrcii wrote: post #31

Live sports moving online would be the final nail in the coffin of the cable television industry.

Streaming is a poor user experience compared to cable with a good DVR. In some ways it hits sports especially hard. Streaming is inherently rewind-unfriendly, that's something you want more often with sports. The whole smooth rewind/pause/fast-forward ability is a priority for me and would keep me on a Tivo forever. Even on a local bluray it's less convenient, with streaming it's a dealbreaker. Also, streaming is inh…

>Streaming is inherently rewind-unfriendly

HOW?!?!?

>streaming is inherently risky in the sense of random pauses, buffering, dynamic drops in resolution.

Netflix works great for me. I've bought streaming packages for European soccer, also streamed Olympics and World Cup, so I don't know what you're talking about. It was great.

But OK, maybe you're like that guy who still has a landline because in emergencies landlines are more likely to work than a cell phone -no problem, I don't judge. For vast majority of users with residential connectivity, streaming is perfect.

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