The NFL will no longer have digital streams of live Thursday Night Football games on Twitter this season after reaching agreement with Amazon instead. But that doesn’t mean Twitter won’t be a major player in how the NFL seeks to engage fans.
Twitter and the NFL continue to be partners with a “great relationship” after the social media site did a “great job” last season in testing the live streams, NFL VP of Digital Media Business Development Blake Stuchin said Tuesday at Streaming Media East in New York.
Noting that Twitter is a platform for live content and conversation that is becoming “increasingly interesting,” Stuchin explained the three next steps in which the NFL will see its presence grow on Twitter this season after the coverage plans were announced last week.
Twitter live show
With Twitter having turned to original programming for content, the NFL is scheduled in late August to launch a 30-minute yet-to-be-named pregame show that will be hosted by NFL Network talent and run five days a week from Sundays through Thursdays.
“One of the things that’s so interesting about these digital platforms is the idea that we can tap into fans that are already on their devices, already watching,” Stuhin explained. “And you can imagine signing off from the end of watching this feed and fans being able to tune right in and be reminded that they can go watch games on the next platform.”
Periscope pregame
The coverage isn’t heavily produced, but provides a unique behind-the-scenes look at warmups on the field and gets fans closer to the action with the help of on-air talent doing interviews.
“We’re going to roll that out this year with every single one of the national primetime games, so Monday night, Thursday night, Sunday night,” Stuchin said. “Some of the other games as well, perhaps the playoffs. Throughout the regular season, you’ll see that.”
The league had already experimented with the Periscope streams last year before the Super Bowl and select Thursday night games.
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Highlight clips tweeted in-game
While it was reported last season how the NFL would not allow its teams to post highlights during games that the league had not yet made available, according to a league spokesman, that is no longer the case and teams have been able to post clips on Twitter since late last season.
The league itself will continue to post highlights on Twitter during games.
“What we’re going to continue to do is put in-progress highlights – those near-real-time moments you see a spectacular catch, a great play, a controversial call — you’ll see that pulled right away from some high-quality software that enables us to do that in near-real-time and putting it up on Twitter right away,” Stuchin said. “We’ve done that for years. We’re going to continue to do that in a bigger way.”
So while the NFL is just starting out with its streams on Amazon and doesn’t have a formal partnership with Facebook but hopes to do so in the future, according to Stuchin, Twitter will remain a destination for fans and a place for the league to do business.
“What we were focused on was saying we have 192 million fans across league, club and player accounts just on Twitter,” Stuchin said. “That’s just people who are following either NFL clubs, the league or all of our players on Twitter. It’s still a huge platform to engage those fans.”