Twitter signs host of Asia-Pacific deals, enhances Nascar partnership

Social media platform Twitter has signed a raft of new content deals for the Asia-Pacific market, while it has enhanced its partnership with North American stock car-racing series Nascar.

The nine new premium video sports collaborations announced today (Thursday) include the Asian Tour, where fans will have access to clips and highlights coming from its major golf events. Twitter has also partnered with the International Table Tennis Federation for highlights of matches and other clips in almost real time.

Twitter has also agreed deals with Malaysian pay-television broadcaster Astro, international sports broadcaster Eleven Sports, pay-television broadcaster Fox Sports Asia, Indonesian media platform NetTV, Southeast Asian OTT service Sportsfix, Indonesian broadcaster TV One and digital football platform BallBall.

Astro will offer fans in Malaysia access to clips and content from the Fifa World Cup, English Premier League, Formula One, MotoGP, PGA Tour and Asian Tour, grand slam tennis, the Asian Champions League and Asian Cup.

BallBall will provide fans in Indonesia with access to clips and game highlights from the top European football leagues. Eleven Sports will host clips and game highlights coming from Italy’s Serie A, the English FA Cup and more in Singapore.

Fox Sports Asia will offer clips and content from the German Bundesliga, French Open, Wimbledon, US Open, Asian Champions League and Cup. NetTV will offer up clips and game highlights from MotoGP.

Sportsfix will serve fans in Malaysia with access to clips and game highlights coming from the Malaysian League, Thai League and Serie A. Finally, TV One in Indonesia will provide clips and game highlights from the likes of Liga Satu and martial arts competitions.

Each of these partners will utilise Twitter’s in-stream sponsorships to enable the publisher partners to monetise their video content. The premium sports video content shared on Twitter will include a short pre-roll ad from content sponsors.

Aneesh Madani, head of sport partnerships in Asia Pacific for Twitter, said: “Digital video consumption in Asia Pacific is growing rapidly. Introducing these new in-stream video sponsorship deals for sports to advertisers in Asia Pacific will strengthen the success of our partners in the region, and give fans an easy way to keep up with the sports they care about most.”

Meanwhile, Nascar has announced it will live-stream one in-car camera on Twitter for 15 Nascar Cup Series races during the second half of the 2018 racing season, including all 10 Playoffs races.

Beginning with five regular season races this summer, the experience will provide fans a look from inside the race car with a live camera stream that can be accessed via Nascar’s official Twitter handle, @NASCAR. Nascar debuted the in-car camera live stream on Twitter during last year’s Playoffs.

Fans on Twitter will now experience an in-car camera live stream from the Daytona International Speedway for the first time during the Nascar Cup Series race on July 7.

Nascar will also stream an in-car camera on Twitter during regular season races at the road course at Watkins Glen International (August 5), the night race at Bristol Motor Speedway (August 18), the sport’s annual throwback event at Darlington Raceway (September 2) and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (September 9).

This live stream will be accessible for free for logged-in and logged-out users in the United States via Nascar’s official Twitter handle and connected devices. Real-time race highlights will also be available on @NASCAR, offering fans additional ways to follow the playoffs at home or on the go.

On the same screen of this live stream, fans will find a real-time curated timeline of tweets that capture the best of the Nascar race live conversation.