Hacker News Reader

Comment by sna1l | Hacker News Reader

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 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.

View on HN

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.

Or he blackmailed his old buds... just saying :D

Wouldn't surprise me, NFL corporate 'culture' being what it is.

> The league made the point of saying the games will be free and that viewers do not have to be registered Twitter users.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/15138355/twitter-wins-digi...

Yes, but I'm guessing if you want to see the twitter feed, you'll need to have an account (of course, I should probably read the whole article in case it talks about that too :)).

twitch.tv for sports?

Just commented that this was a surprisingly smart move for Twitter. Spoke too soon. Sounds like it was really the NFL who saw the opportunity.

I imagine they will go the Twitch.tv route and show the game alongside your twitter feed (maybe restricted to #some-hashtag) so you can chat with your mates while watching.

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 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.

> 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.

Only for the first half of the season. Then it goes exclusive to NFL Network, except in the home markets of the teams playing (there it is also shown on CBS).

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com