15 ms·

Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football

122 points by protomyth 11y ago

CrazyCatDog 11y ago
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-with-Video-Content-Each-Day/1012362 http://www.emarketer.com/Article/US-Adults-Spend-55-Hours-wi... (2) http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/21/4-one-in-seven-americans-are-television-cord-cutters/ http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/21/4-one-in-seven-america...
- koolba 11y ago
  > 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?
  - monk_e_boy 11y ago
    I doubt you will be able to, but the NFL, Twitter and everyone outside the US knows we'll be proxing in and watching the ads -- so? Shrug?
  - fernandotakai 11y ago
    you can currently buy NFL's gamepass outside the us (i paid mine in brazilian reais) and stream every single game.
  - omegaham 11y ago
    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.
- kristianc 11y ago
  Does depend where outside the US you mean - Sky in the UK show two, often three Sunday games, all the playoffs, Thanksgiving, and coverage in the UK increases year on year. If you live somewhere like London, finding a bar that shows the game is also trivial. The real bugbear for UK fans is the often one sided / low quality nature of the games they send over here. In all the time that there's been NFL in London, they haven't sent two teams with a winning record to play each other.
  - arprocter 11y ago
    A lot of that has to do with them sending the Jags again and again
    - kristianc 11y ago
      Part of it is also that good teams do not want to give up 'home' games. So we end up getting teams like the Jags with a small fan base, or the Dolphins.
- bluedino 11y ago
  >> Within the US, it's hard to imagine folks turning away from a television and onto a monitor/phone/tablet to watch football. Not really. So many of us have removed cable TV from our lives. It's not uncommon to see people at restaurants or work streaming live sports on a 4G device. I'll even pull up a stream on my second monitor instead of going in the living room to watch the game OTA.
- osweiller 11y ago
  In the US this deal is effectively irrelevant because the host network of the TNF game already has digital streaming rights. e.g. if the game is on CBS, CBS is also streaming it online, as they did last year. Twitter can also serve US customers the stream, but they're carrying CBS' stream, including all CBS ads, so they effectively are providing a free distribution network for the networks, presumably just to draw users to the service (though I fail to see how streaming video has anything to do with Twitter, every service is trying to be everything to everyone). Outside of the US is where this deal has real relevance, because the US networks often geo-restrict their feeds. Though again it will be carrying the US network feed and ads. Which is why Twitter "won" this bid with only $10M. It isn't really a big deal.
  - mrpippy 11y ago
    And Verizon has exclusive "smartphone" streaming rights tied up for years to come, so Twitter can't even stream to mobile (the form-factor that they've ridden to success)
- Grue3 11y ago
  Well, NFL is not exactly popular outside of US. If they were streaming Champions League final, then we'd be talking.
ejcx 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
lbotos 11y ago
Has twitter ever streamed anything before? Are they gonna partner with some streaming provider to actually make it work?
- jordonias 11y ago
  Twitter owns Vine and Periscope.
- noer 11y ago
  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.
  - whatok 11y ago
    > 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)
  - deegles 11y ago
    It would be cool to have live periscope streams off of each player's helmet. :)
sna1l 11y ago
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-for-global-nfl-streaming-deal/ http://recode.net/2016/04/05/twitter-beats-amazon-verizon-fo...). 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.
- hnrodey 11y ago
  > The league made the point of saying the games will be free and that viewers do not have to be registered Twitter users. http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/15138355/twitter-wins-digital-streaming-rights-nfl-thursday-night-games http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/15138355/twitter-wins-digi...
  - bdavisx 11y ago
    Yes, but I'm guessing if you want to see the twitter feed, you'll need to have an account (of course, I should probably read the whole article in case it talks about that too :)).
    - home_boi 11y ago
      twitch.tv for sports?
- mgalka 11y ago
  Just commented that this was a surprisingly smart move for Twitter. Spoke too soon. Sounds like it was really the NFL who saw the opportunity.
- arprocter 11y ago
  Yahoo did surprisingly well last season. IIRC they didn't make you sign up to watch
incongruity 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - wtvanhest 11y ago
    They are also in the ads business and can sell across both platforms.
- cvwright 11y ago
  > So, we'll be watching it in six second chunks? If it's HLS or DASH, then pretty much, yeah. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...
mgalka 11y ago
There may be hope for Twitter yet. Sounds like a very smart move. Twitter-style commentary is a natural fit with sports games.
justinv 11y ago
I wonder how much Anthony Noto (current Twitter CFO, former NFL CFO) was able to influence the decision. Smart hire for Twitter folks.
brandonmenc 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
at-fates-hands 11y ago
"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?
- GrinningFool 11y ago
  Why would that be a conflict? At least to me, it seems no more a conflict than relying on your personal contacts to land your next job. Only the scale differs.
- jat850 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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/NFLCompliancePlan.pdf http://www.thesportsesquires.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/...
jrcii 11y ago
Live sports moving online would be the final nail in the coffin of the cable television industry.
- victor9000 11y ago
  Agreed. I watch network television once a week during football season, and then never again until the following year.
- gdulli 11y ago
  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.
  - epa 11y ago
    All things that can be fixed with good software. These problems are someone's opportunity.
    - gdulli 11y ago
      The hardware isn't being built with DVR-like storage and there's nothing software can do to create additional bandwidth when it becomes too scarce. Cable just works and my other devices and neighbors don't threaten it. These problems all exist today and the needless but inevitable push for 4K is going to make them much worse.
      - freehunter 11y ago
        Having to use a DVR is something specific to live cable broadcasts. Internet streaming doesn't need anything like that, since the Internet is inherently interactive. Have you ever watched streaming sports on the Internet? Something like the MLB.tv platform, which is award-winning and used by millions of people not just for MLB but for other streaming media? It has rewind, picture-in-picture, the ability to watch multiple streams (home and away announcers) for the same event, the ability to either start from the beginning of the broadcast or start from live (and from live, rewind to the beginning if you so choose). You can also watch any game basically since baseball started being broadcast. None of those things exist on cable. So I'm not sure why you're saying that cable is a better sports-watching medium. Why the hell would I ever need to rewind a local copy of the game?
rconti 11y ago
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.
- blackaspen 11y ago
  There's a Periscope AppleTV app.
rajacombinator 11y ago
Sounds awesome ... Good luck moderating that stream though.
fro 11y ago
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.
rmason 11y ago
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 11y ago
  If that is the case, then they would do better to be on Snapchat.
timdellinger 11y ago
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...
Paul-ish 11y ago
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.
kin 11y ago
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?
bogomipz 11y ago
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.
- awad 11y ago
  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.

122 points by protomyth 11y ago

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

koolba 11y ago
> 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?
- monk_e_boy 11y ago
  I doubt you will be able to, but the NFL, Twitter and everyone outside the US knows we'll be proxing in and watching the ads -- so? Shrug?
- fernandotakai 11y ago
  you can currently buy NFL's gamepass outside the us (i paid mine in brazilian reais) and stream every single game.
- omegaham 11y ago
  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.
kristianc 11y ago
Does depend where outside the US you mean - Sky in the UK show two, often three Sunday games, all the playoffs, Thanksgiving, and coverage in the UK increases year on year. If you live somewhere like London, finding a bar that shows the game is also trivial. The real bugbear for UK fans is the often one sided / low quality nature of the games they send over here. In all the time that there's been NFL in London, they haven't sent two teams with a winning record to play each other.
- arprocter 11y ago
  A lot of that has to do with them sending the Jags again and again
  - kristianc 11y ago
    Part of it is also that good teams do not want to give up 'home' games. So we end up getting teams like the Jags with a small fan base, or the Dolphins.
bluedino 11y ago
>> Within the US, it's hard to imagine folks turning away from a television and onto a monitor/phone/tablet to watch football. Not really. So many of us have removed cable TV from our lives. It's not uncommon to see people at restaurants or work streaming live sports on a 4G device. I'll even pull up a stream on my second monitor instead of going in the living room to watch the game OTA.
osweiller 11y ago
In the US this deal is effectively irrelevant because the host network of the TNF game already has digital streaming rights. e.g. if the game is on CBS, CBS is also streaming it online, as they did last year. Twitter can also serve US customers the stream, but they're carrying CBS' stream, including all CBS ads, so they effectively are providing a free distribution network for the networks, presumably just to draw users to the service (though I fail to see how streaming video has anything to do with Twitter, every service is trying to be everything to everyone). Outside of the US is where this deal has real relevance, because the US networks often geo-restrict their feeds. Though again it will be carrying the US network feed and ads. Which is why Twitter "won" this bid with only $10M. It isn't really a big deal.
- mrpippy 11y ago
  And Verizon has exclusive "smartphone" streaming rights tied up for years to come, so Twitter can't even stream to mobile (the form-factor that they've ridden to success)
Grue3 11y ago
Well, NFL is not exactly popular outside of US. If they were streaming Champions League final, then we'd be talking.

ejcx 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.

lbotos 11y ago

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

jordonias 11y ago
Twitter owns Vine and Periscope.
noer 11y ago
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.
- whatok 11y ago
  > 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)
- deegles 11y ago
  It would be cool to have live periscope streams off of each player's helmet. :)

sna1l 11y ago

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-for-global-nfl-streaming-deal/ http://recode.net/2016/04/05/twitter-beats-amazon-verizon-fo...). 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.

hnrodey 11y ago
> The league made the point of saying the games will be free and that viewers do not have to be registered Twitter users. http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/15138355/twitter-wins-digital-streaming-rights-nfl-thursday-night-games http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/15138355/twitter-wins-digi...
- bdavisx 11y ago
  Yes, but I'm guessing if you want to see the twitter feed, you'll need to have an account (of course, I should probably read the whole article in case it talks about that too :)).
  - home_boi 11y ago
    twitch.tv for sports?
mgalka 11y ago
Just commented that this was a surprisingly smart move for Twitter. Spoke too soon. Sounds like it was really the NFL who saw the opportunity.
arprocter 11y ago
Yahoo did surprisingly well last season. IIRC they didn't make you sign up to watch

incongruity 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
- wtvanhest 11y ago
  They are also in the ads business and can sell across both platforms.
cvwright 11y ago
> So, we'll be watching it in six second chunks? If it's HLS or DASH, then pretty much, yeah. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...

mgalka 11y ago

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

justinv 11y ago

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

brandonmenc 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.

at-fates-hands 11y ago

"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?

GrinningFool 11y ago
Why would that be a conflict? At least to me, it seems no more a conflict than relying on your personal contacts to land your next job. Only the scale differs.
jat850 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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/NFLCompliancePlan.pdf http://www.thesportsesquires.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/...

jrcii 11y ago

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

victor9000 11y ago
Agreed. I watch network television once a week during football season, and then never again until the following year.
gdulli 11y ago
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.
- epa 11y ago
  All things that can be fixed with good software. These problems are someone's opportunity.
  - gdulli 11y ago
    The hardware isn't being built with DVR-like storage and there's nothing software can do to create additional bandwidth when it becomes too scarce. Cable just works and my other devices and neighbors don't threaten it. These problems all exist today and the needless but inevitable push for 4K is going to make them much worse.
    - freehunter 11y ago
      Having to use a DVR is something specific to live cable broadcasts. Internet streaming doesn't need anything like that, since the Internet is inherently interactive. Have you ever watched streaming sports on the Internet? Something like the MLB.tv platform, which is award-winning and used by millions of people not just for MLB but for other streaming media? It has rewind, picture-in-picture, the ability to watch multiple streams (home and away announcers) for the same event, the ability to either start from the beginning of the broadcast or start from live (and from live, rewind to the beginning if you so choose). You can also watch any game basically since baseball started being broadcast. None of those things exist on cable. So I'm not sure why you're saying that cable is a better sports-watching medium. Why the hell would I ever need to rewind a local copy of the game?

rconti 11y ago

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.

blackaspen 11y ago
There's a Periscope AppleTV app.

rajacombinator 11y ago

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

fro 11y ago

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.

rmason 11y ago

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 11y ago
If that is the case, then they would do better to be on Snapchat.

timdellinger 11y ago

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...

Paul-ish 11y ago

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.

kin 11y ago

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?

bogomipz 11y ago

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.

awad 11y ago
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.