NFL achieves ‘tri-cast’ goal with Twitter partnership

American football league the NFL has today (Tuesday) selected social media company Twitter as its exclusive partner to deliver a live over-the-top digital stream of Thursday Night Football games to a global audience across all devices and for free during the course of the 2016 regular season.

Twitter will stream the 10 Thursday Night Football games broadcast by the NBC and CBS networks, which will also be simulcast on cable television broadcaster NFL Network, securing the league’s targeted ‘tri-cast’ distribution model of broadcast, cable and digital platforms.

The NFL and Twitter will provide free, live streaming video of Thursday Night Football without authentication to the over 800 million registered and non-registered users worldwide on the Twitter platform on mobile phones, tablets, PCs and connected televisions.

In addition to live streaming video of NFL action, the partnership includes in-game highlights from TNF as well as pre-game broadcasts from players and teams via Twitter’s Periscope service.

“Twitter is where live events unfold and is the right partner for the NFL as we take the latest step in serving fans around the world live NFL football,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. “There is a massive amount of NFL-related conversation happening on Twitter during our games and tapping into that audience, in addition to our viewers on broadcast and cable, will ensure Thursday Night Football is seen on an unprecedented number of platforms this season. This agreement also provides additional reach for those brands advertising with our broadcast partners.”

Last season, the NFL broke new digital ground in a partnership with internet company Yahoo to deliver a free, global live stream of a regular season NFL game, the first time users could access the NFL’s premium content worldwide, without authentication.

When the Buffalo Bills faced off against the Jacksonville Jaguars from London’s Wembley Stadium on October 25, fans streamed over 480 million minutes of the game, with 33 per cent of streams coming in internationally, across 185 countries worldwide.

Yahoo was also reportedly in contention for the Thursday Night Football package, along with the likes of telecommunications company Verizon, technology giant Amazon and social media platform Facebook.

Twitter had not previously been mentioned amongst the leading contenders for the rights, with Goodell last month reporting strong levels of interest in the Thursday Night Football package. Goodell admitted that the process of awarding a contract had been delayed by the levels of interest shown.

The NFL in February struck new two-season deals for its Thursday Night Football broadcast rights package, continuing its partnership with CBS while also adding rival US network NBC as a partner. The new broadcast deals will expand Thursday Night Football for the 2016 and 2017 seasons. Both CBS and NBC will broadcast five games, growing the package to 10 broadcast games in 2016 and 2017 from eight in 2014 and 2015.

In August, the NFL signed a new multi-year partnership with Twitter to deliver daily uniquely packaged official NFL video and other types of content to fans on a year-round basis. The agreement followed a deal struck in September 2013, when the NFL was among the early partners on Twitter Amplify, showing extra footage on certain game days, after games and during the off-season.