Thursday night National Football League games will be livestreamed over Twitter beginning this fall.
The social-media giant won rights after bidding against Amazon, Yahoo and Verizon, Bloomberg News reported first Tuesday. Facebook reportedly dropped out of the contest last week.
Recommended Stories
Twitter will stream 10 of the 16 NFL Thursday night games for free. The games will still be available on regular television, on NBC, CBS and NFL Network, the NFL said in a statement.
There is no price tag yet on the deal. Last October, Yahoo paid $17 million to stream a game from London, which aired at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time. According to the NFL, over 480 minutes of the game was streamed across 185 countries worldwide.
In the most recent broadcast deal, CBS and NBC each paid about $45 million a game for five Thursday night games for the 2016 and 2017 seasons, Bloomberg reported.
“This is about transforming the fan experience with football. People watch NFL games with Twitter today,” Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, said in a statement. “Now they’ll be able to watch right on Twitter Thursday nights.”
The livestreams will be available through Twitter’s app on phones, tablets, computers and connected TVs, the NFL said.
Twitter COO Adam Bain tweeted that it “continues our strategy to build the world’s best daily connected audience that watches together and can talk with one another in real-time,” and that he “can’t wait” to show the market.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell took to Twitter to make the announcement in his first tweet since Sept. 5, 2014.
This fall Thursday Night Football will be streamed live @twitter so fans will see more of this. https://t.co/s6tbr9FjvY
— Roger Goodell (@nflcommish) April 5, 2016
