Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football
npr.org
npr.org
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 other bids were definitely higher, but I think this was a smart decision by the NFL. If Twitter can pull the live stream off with their strong live social capability, it would be great for both parties.
Disclaimer: The IF that twitter can pull of the live stream is a significant IF, not to be underestimated.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/15138355/twitter-wins-digi...
IIRC they didn't make you sign up to watch
Twitter, by comparison, is broadcasting the Thursday Night game alongside several other channels. I'd guess that the number of people who actually use this service will be relatively small. On cable tv alone, there are two channels (NFL Network and CBS) that both broadcast the game.
The big one there is CBS, meaning that the game is already accessible even for cord-cutters, assuming they get acceptable reception from their local CBS station.
Good point about the Yahoo game being exclusive - it'll be interesting to see how the viewing figures pan out
The original Twitter NFL Highlights deal served a strategic purpose for the firm. This new deal looks like an advertising campaign to buy Twitter some much needed, new US mindshare.
(1) http://www.emarketer.com/Article/US-Adults-Spend-55-Hours-wi... (2) http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/21/4-one-in-seven-america...
What makes you think you'll be able to stream this from an IP address outside of the US?
There are obstacles that prevent, say, a German or a Frenchman from actually getting into American football, just like there are obstacles that prevent an American from becoming a fan of the Bundesliga. Eliminating those obstacles would do wonders for increasing viewership.
The real bugbear for UK fans is the often one sided / low quality nature of the games they send over here. In all the time that there's been NFL in London, they haven't sent two teams with a winning record to play each other.
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.
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.
I'm just happy to see the wheels start moving on sports to get them off of cable, though. Football looks like the one last reason a lot of people haven't become cable cutters
Also, streaming is inherently risky in the sense of random pauses, buffering, dynamic drops in resolution. For a live event, especially during a dramatic moment, that's not something I'd deal with. Twitter has no control over my network connection. I barely do.
These problems all exist today and the needless but inevitable push for 4K is going to make them much worse.
Have you ever watched streaming sports on the Internet? Something like the MLB.tv platform, which is award-winning and used by millions of people not just for MLB but for other streaming media? It has rewind, picture-in-picture, the ability to watch multiple streams (home and away announcers) for the same event, the ability to either start from the beginning of the broadcast or start from live (and from live, rewind to the beginning if you so choose). You can also watch any game basically since baseball started being broadcast.
None of those things exist on cable. So I'm not sure why you're saying that cable is a better sports-watching medium. Why the hell would I ever need to rewind a local copy of the game?
I only watch TV for basketball, and when the grey-market streaming service I was using for NBA games got shut down, I wanted to at least be able to see the nationally televised (ESPN and TNT) games without cable.
I tried Sling for a month and it had issues, but for the past few weeks I've been using Playstation Vue it has been practically flawless. I'm on a 25/3 Time Warner connection running at least half a dozen connected devices during peak usage times, and I haven't seen a hiccup or quality drop once. The NCAA championship game last night was without buffering and looked great on my 4K TV (not in 4K, but the quality never changed to the point where I noticed any drop in clarity). It has some DVR functions depending on the program and channel as well.
When I gave up on cable I had to take half a day off of work and drive an hour to the central office and say "no" a dozen times to their pleas to keep me on as a cable customer.
I agree with you about the network connection quality though.
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.
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.
I disagree, especially when considering how awesome MLB.tv is, and BAM (Baseball Advanced Media) in general. Any game I want (subject to a few blackout restrictions, which you can get around if you're so inclined), and I have the choice of home vs. away broadcast. I pay for 100 Mbps at my apartment, and haven't had an issue with streaming games thus far this season - didn't last year either. And the ability to watch multiple Baseball games at once is simply amazing. So much Baseball! The price point dropped this season because of an out-of-court settlement[1]. As far as rewinding....for live sports?...meh. MLB and their partner broadcasters do a pretty solid job with replay.
Every year is the same for me: I have cable up until Baseball season starts, then I cancel it and just get MLB.tv because that's all I watch anyway. I doubt this issue will go away for MLB. Eventually I think enough pressure is going to hit these local networks that they'll face more problems in the future.
So perhaps if you limit the scope of your comment to streaming television shows...maybe, but I doubt it. If I'm streaming a TV show on HBO Go/Hulu/whatever...doesn't that mean I by-definition have all rewind/pause/etc control?
[1] http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/more-details-on-t...
I get that on cable TV now, since they've gone digital. Granted less than streaming, but it does happen.
The data readily show that young people are not paying customers [of cable services]. In the long term, professional sports organizations have to go online to maintain relevance to home/casual viewers.
In 2015, CBS and NFL network "teamed up" to provide coverage of Thursday night football, which meant... the first half of the season was available over-the-air, and the second half was cable-only.
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.
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 base, etc., but it definitely will also fragment the user base as well.
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.
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...
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)
Yeah, no conflict of interest there huh?
At least to me, it seems no more a conflict than relying on your personal contacts to land your next job. Only the scale differs.
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/...
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.
Where in the current Twitter UI will users be able to access this? Are they going to all of a suddent develop AppleTV/Roku viewing apps? Is the stream using Periscope backend? Can it even handle that quality? Will there be a push for Periscope at all? If Twitter is paying for rights to show the games, where is the monetization? So it's just to acquire users? How will acquiring users to view games translate to users that will use Twitter? Will advertisers be streaming live tweets that are dynamically relative to what's going on?
They already have the platform, community, and infrastructure to do this kind of thing perfectly.
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...