
Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football - protomyth
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/05/473099436/twitter-wins-nfl-deal-to-stream-2016-thursday-night-football
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sna1l
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...](http://recode.net/2016/04/05/twitter-beats-amazon-verizon-for-global-
nfl-streaming-deal/)). 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.

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mikeyouse
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.

~~~
erichocean
Probably has some inside knowledge on the NFL's own financials, too.

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

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

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CrazyCatDog
This is a huge deal for folks outside the US. Within the US, it's hard to
imagine folks turning away from a television and onto a monitor/phone/tablet
to watch football. Football feeds straight into the average American's robust
average 4 hours of daily television viewing (1). Before you ask about cord-
cutters, note that reliable numbers are relatively weak on that end (2).

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...](http://www.emarketer.com/Article/US-Adults-Spend-55-Hours-with-Video-
Content-Each-Day/1012362) (2) [http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/21/4-one-in-
seven-america...](http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/21/4-one-in-seven-
americans-are-television-cord-cutters/)

~~~
koolba
> This is a huge deal for folks outside the US.

What makes you think you'll be able to stream this from an IP address outside
of the US?

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omegaham
The NFL's past behavior has shown that they want to increase their market.
Making football games available to everyone is one of the best ways to get
international fans.

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.

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ejcx
I am a little sad that Yahoo didn't win, having watched the Bills Jags game in
London over the stream. It was really really high quality and well done. It
was great to watch too.

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

~~~
mmanfrin
I'm not. When they picked up Community for season 6, they did such a bungling
of release that most die-hard fans never even saw the 6th season (despite it
being great). Yahoo's problem is that they throw too much at the wall and dont
have enough bandwidth to follow through appropriately.

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

~~~
gdulli
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 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.

~~~
fluxquanta
Streaming TV is only getting better.

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.

~~~
bogomipz
Looking at the Playstation Vue plans right now and it doesn't look like these
are any cheaper than regular cable TV $55/$45/$40 a month are the three tiers.
Is there something I'm missing?

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fluxquanta
Pricing must be based on where you're located, because the lowest tier (all I
need) is only $30 here. The biggest benefit for me is that when the NBA
season's done I will just click a button and stop paying, then click another
button and start again in October.

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.

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rconti
_sigh_ would be nice if it was somebody with a better-supported streaming
experience like YouTube. I've already got a YouTube app on about 3 devices
connected to my TV. I'm sure not going to watch on a computer. Maybe twitter
will come up with an AppleTV app....

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.

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blackaspen
There's a Periscope AppleTV app.

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brandonmenc
For anyone skeptical of this format, the comedian Norm Macdonald live tweets
PGA golf - for hours at a time - to the joy of many.

[https://twitter.com/normmacdonald](https://twitter.com/normmacdonald)

~~~
pgodzin
Love Norm but not really relevant here. Twitter is going to have a live video
stream of the game, not a feed of tweets. Different format.

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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.

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incongruity
So, we'll be watching it in six second chunks? Play by play 140 characters at
a time?

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.

~~~
theseatoms
It feels exactly "on brand" to me. Live events with massive audiences are
Twitter's bread and butter (from a usage perspective, if not revenue).

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.

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wtvanhest
They are also in the ads business and can sell across both platforms.

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lbotos
Has twitter ever streamed anything before? Are they gonna partner with some
streaming provider to actually make it work?

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noer
There actually was a pretty neat use-case for live streaming via periscope
last year. I'm a pretty big hockey fan (to the point where I follow beat
writers of teams I don't consider myself a fan of). Last season there started
to be a trend of writers using periscope to live-stream warmups and postgame
interviews. It was neat to get that level of access, despite the video quality
not being great. About a month after people started doing it, the league
stepped in to say that live streams constituted "broadcast without consent"
and most people stopped doing it.

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whatok
> About a month after people started doing it, the league stepped in to say
> that live streams constituted "broadcast without consent" and most people
> stopped doing it.

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)

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justinv
I wonder how much Anthony Noto (current Twitter CFO, former NFL CFO) was able
to influence the decision. Smart hire for Twitter folks.

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at-fates-hands
_" 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?

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jat850
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.)

~~~
at-fates-hands
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/...](http://www.thesportsesquires.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/05/NFLCompliancePlan.pdf)

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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.

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

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kin
Wow! I think this is actually pretty huge. Granted it puts a lot of pressure
on Twitter to execute. I have a ton of questions to ask, so you can ignore the
following, but I just wanted to put some of these questions out there.

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?

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fro
Amazon should use it's bank to get these kinds of deals for Twitch.tv.

They already have the platform, community, and infrastructure to do this kind
of thing perfectly.

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mgalka
There may be hope for Twitter yet. Sounds like a very smart move. Twitter-
style commentary is a natural fit with sports games.

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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...

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bogomipz
Why do I want to tweet while watching the game? How does taking your attention
off the game by multitasking enhance the experience in any way? This seems
like a desperate move to me on Twitter's part. Football is about drinking a
few beers and watching the game with a couple of friends not hashtags.

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awad
Tweeting during live events is pretty much how my regular (don't work in tech)
friends use Twitter. I would wager that many/most people use Twitter this way.

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rajacombinator
Sounds awesome ... Good luck moderating that stream though.

