When I saw this article by Kurt Wagner on the Mashable site this morning I was excited. That little blue tweety-bird has come a long way. I currently monitor Twitter for Cardinals baseball scores and this winter will for the Rams, Blues and SEC Football, but now according to Kurt, I can see Instant Replay on NFL games.
NFL Will Show Instant Replays via Twitter
Twitter continues to add major partnerships ahead of its looming IPO, and it now has the world's most popular sports league on its team.
The NFL will now show instant replays via Twitter, reports Reuters. The partnership, which was reported Wednesday, is part of Twitter's Amplify program to bring more video content to Twitter streams. Reuters called it Twitter's "biggest sports-related commitment to date."
Sources familiar with the matter have confirmed the partnership to Mashable.
Twitter launched its Amplify program in May, and works with broadcasters to bring additional video content to Twitter in hopes of capturing viewer attention on a "second screen" (either smartphone or tablet). The NFL partnership means that marketers can now sponsor a tweet that includes NFL video replays and other NFL-related content. The videos will run with a short video ad intro, and both the NFL and Twitter will receive portions of the proceeds, according to Reuters.
The NFL agreement comes just two days after Twitter announced its largest Amplify partnership to date — CBS. That announcement came Monday at Advertising Week in New York City, and includes 20 brands and 42 different shows, meaning more packages than any other single Amplify deal. The Amplify program is sure to increase Twitter's ad revenues, a point of focus for both the company and potential investors as Twitter moves toward an IPO later this year.
Twitter has partnered with sports leagues in the past to bring instant replay to Twitter. The NBA tweeted out highlights during the 2013 playoffs, and the NCAA shared instant replays on Twitter during March Madness.
Twitter is not alone in trying to capture eyeballs fixed on NFL games. Facebook announced a content deal with Fox Sports on Sunday that the social network hopes will encourage more users to talk about the games in real-time within their Facebook network. In 2011, the NFL reported that 200 million unique viewers tuned into NFL games throughout the season, meaning there are a lot of viewers up for grabs when it comes to the second screen.
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