Twitter wins rights to stream Thursday Night Football games
The NFL has reached a deal with Twitter to stream Thursday Night Football games during the 2016 season, commissioner Roger Goodell announced Tuesday.
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
The league began looking for a digital streaming partner for its Thursday night package earlier this year, with Verizon, Yahoo, and Amazon all said to be in the mix. Facebook recently dropped out of the bidding, a person with knowledge of the discussions told Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg.
The deal will cost Twitter a little more than $10 million, which works out to about $1 million per game, John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reports.
Yahoo paid $17 million last season for the rights to stream a Week 7 matchup between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars from London's Wembley Stadium. CBS and NBC each paid $225 million to broadcast five Thursday night games apiece during the 2016 and 2017 seasons, all of which will be simulcast on NFL Network.
The league-owned network will also exclusively televise an eight-game package consisting of Thursday Night Football, late-season Saturday games, and additional games to be determined.