Twitch, the Amazon-owned social video service that’s popular among esports fans, is diving headfirst into the world of traditional sports with two major announcements this month that involve the NFL and NBA.
On Dec. 7, the service began hosting Thursday Night Football games through twitch.tv/primevideo when the New Orleans Saints played the Atlanta Falcons. Then this week, Twitch announced that it would begin streaming up to six NBA G League games a week beginning with Friday’s game between the Austin Spurs and the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.
The Thursday Night Football games mark the first major live sporting events that have been streamed through Twitch, though the platform first experimented with traditional sports earlier this year when it began streaming pro wrestling events. It also started to build out a community of streamers this year focused on health and fitness.
Previously, Twitch’s primary interaction with traditional sports was through the streaming of competitive sports-related video games, such as Madden and NBA 2K. A number of pro athletes have streamed their video game play through Twitch as well, including San Francisco Giants right fielder Hunter Pence, Minnesota Twins pitcher Trevor May and Chicago Bears guard Kyle Long.
“Sports on Twitch have been a highly visible adjacent area of interest to our community based on the popularity of sports-related video games, such as Madden, FIFA, and NBA 2K,” a Twitch spokesperson told SportTechie. “We also have athletes from every major sport playing video games on Twitch.”
Watch Thursday Night Football Live on Twitch from primevideo on www.twitch.tv
The new NFL stream on Twitch is related to Amazon’s rights deal with the league to stream 11 Thursday night games this season. However, it’s available for free on Twitch for those logged into their Amazon accounts, whereas Amazon’s football stream was previously exclusive to Prime members. To chat during the streaming of Thursday Night Football, users must log into their Twitch accounts.
It’s unclear what triggered this shift in strategy. While Amazon announced in October that it amassed 7.1 million streaming views in its first four NFL games, it hasn’t provided an update to those numbers since. It had appeared to be outpacing Twitter, which had the streaming rights the season prior. Twitter reported an average audience of 243,000 for its first game last year between the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills.
It remains to be seen whether Twitch and Amazon will get the rights to stream football games after this season. Just one game remains as part of Amazon’s Thursday Night Football deal with the NFL: the Dec. 25 game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Houston Texans, which will also stream live on Twitch. The service will have streamed the final three Thursday Night Football games of the season.
“Watching the game on Twitch is like hanging out on the world’s biggest couch,” Twitch wrote on a blog announcing the partnership. “Chat is right there with you for every touchdown, every turnover, every questionable call, and every great one. Last week’s broadcast featured a game that came down to the wire, and the fans were out in force.
“Basically it’s kind of like esports… just without the ‘e’.”
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The NBA G League, on the other hand, seems to have been a more concerted effort. With a structure built out specifically for Twitch that’s aimed at leveraging the platform’s 15 million daily active users and popularity with a younger generation.
The minor league’s enabling of live co-streaming with top Twitch video game personalities — some of whom have close to a million followers — and interactive stats differentiate its Twitch stream from the traditional broadcast. Fans are able to access stats about players, teams or the game in real time by clicking on a team’s name or logo next to the scoreboard.