Twitter users will be able to watch live Thursday night American football games after the tech company became the surprise winner in a bidding war that included Amazon and Yahoo.
Ten games from the NFL’s regular season will be broadcast on Twitter, as well as in-game highlights and live pre-game interviews on its streaming platform, Periscope.
The games will be available to people Twitter counts as users even if they are not registered, meaning a potential audience of 800 million.
They will also be shown on TV in the US by NBC and CBS, with the remaining six Thursday night games on the NFL’s own cable channel. Verizon will also retain the US mobile rights to stream all 16 games following a deal in 2010..
The move has surprised the tech industry, with Amazon tipped as the more likely buyer given its previous willingness to pay large sums for TV rights, such as the reported £160m it paid to secure the services of former Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. Facebook, which also seems a more likely buyer given its recent focus on live video, reportedly dropped out of the bidding last week.
Mat Hayward / Shutterstock.com