NEW YORK — Asked to rate the deal that had 10 Thursday Night Football games streamed on Twitter in terms of what the league got out of the experience, NFL COO Tod Leiweke replied with his vision of how the league plans to learn more about younger fans.
“It was really cool, and I think for some of our younger fans, it was unexpected,” Leiweke said of the Twitter deal Wednesday at Leaders’ Sport Business Summit. “I think the world is changing in a really unbelievably rapid way. I think it’s like going from coal to electricity right now.
“We’re trying to understand the values of these younger consumers. I would say my kids led a different life than certainly I have, and I would say my dad’s life and my life have a little more in common. So I think the world is really changing, and we’re intent on staying contemporary. We’ve been great at that, and will continue to do that, and part of doing that is being on the cutting-edge of technology. So we’ve got smart people at 345 (Park Ave. NFL office) thinking about this every day.”
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The NFL is vetting live streaming partners for next season after Year 1 appeared to please both the league and Twitter. According to the company’s letter to shareholders, an average of 3.5 million viewers per game watched the action on Twitter while about 55 percent of those viewers were under age 25.
Twitter COO Anthony Noto reiterated Tuesday that for those in the company, the results from paying for NFL rights “exceeded our expectations” and that the average audience for the games was “well above our expectations. For the league, Noto said the Twitter deal successfully provided value for younger consumers and a more global audience. At least 30 percent of the viewership of the NFL games on Twitter came from outside of the U.S., he said, following Twitter’s letter to shareholders that it was about 25 percent.
“This year we put games on Twitter, but the vast, vast majority of our fans still watch and engage in our games on the big screen,” Leiweke said. “The games are compelling as heck on those big screens.”
For Twitter, it works just fine for television to still be king when it comes to watching the NFL.
“With the NFL, I was such an advocate for a simulcast,” Noto said. “If someone’s at home and they have a 60-inch television, they should watch the National Football League on that television. But they should also consider using their phone as a companion product for them because when they’re on the train, on the go, they shouldn’t be in a position where they paid to have access to content and they can’t get it, and that’s where we can play a key role.
“Similarly, there are younger demographics that don’t want to pay for television. We can serve that audience very well in addition to the pay audience and not have it be cannibalistic…and we think we can prove that as we did in the fourth quarter with the NFL.”