The first game to be televised on ESPN2 is on Saturday afternoon when the Saskatchewan Roughriders take on the Edmonton Eskimos at Commonwealth Stadium at 3:30pm ET. “Our league has a long history with ESPN, and we are thrilled to be expanding our relationship by offering our fans even deeper coverage this year, with live televised games on ESPN2, in addition to those available on ESPN3.” “We are very excited that the CFL is returning to ESPN networks,” said Michael Copeland, President and Chief Operating Officer for the CFL. So the more TV-like an experience Twitter can cultivate, the easier it will be to convince advertisers and programmers that it can deliver the same kind of audience.TORONTO - One game in each of the first five weeks of the 2013 CFL season will be televised live on ESPN2 in the United States, the Canadian Football League announced today.
While the Twitter set-up makes it easy for casual viewers to simply check in on events, the reason TV is so valuable - particularly to advertisers - is the length of time people spend watching it. It’s signed deals with the PAC-12 conference, Bloomberg and CNBC-for-Millennials streaming TV network Cheddar to live stream their content.
Twitter is also attempting to turn itself into a destination for live video. The social platform was reportedly seeking up to $8 million for 10-game ad packages that included placements in pre- and post-game coverage on the service. and U.K.įor Twitter, the money is in the commercial slots that are held for local advertising - NBC and CBS get the national ad money, and those national spots will be seen by everyone watching the Twitter stream, but Twitter gets to sell the local slots in its stream.Īlso Read: Why Leslie Jones' Hack Puts More Pressure on Twitter to Stop Harassment Amazon’s Fire TV and Fire TV Stick will only carry the Twitter app in the U.S. The Xbox One app will be available at first in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, the U.K. The Twitter Apple TV app will be available globally, immediately. Making the games easy to watch in international markets is key for these international ambitions. The NFL has made no secret about wanting to expand internationally, playing games in London and, this season, Mexico City. While CBS and NBC will be handling the broadcast duties and streaming the games on their own sites and apps, they’re limited to the U.S.Īlso Read: Here's Why Twitter Stock Is Down Almost 6 Percent It was something of a shock when the NFL sold global streaming rights for 10 “Thursday Night Football” games to Twitter for a mere $10 million, back in April.īut the “global” part is the key to the NFL-Twitter deal. Twitter’s streams will come from the NBC and CBS broadcasts. NBC and CBS have joint broadcast custody of 10 “Thursday Night Football” games this season - five each.
Of course, you could also just stream the game via various options from CBS, the broadcaster whose feed Twitter will be using for five of the games, including Thursday’s, or even just use an antenna, for those without a pay TV subscription. They don’t even need a Twitter account to watch the games.Īlso Read: Twitter Scores NFL Thursday Night Game Rights
Instead of having to watch via a laptop or phone, fans who want to stream tomorrow’s Jets-Bills matchup can just download the Twitter app to one of the three set-top boxes. Keen observers might note the timing: just one day ahead of the first “Thursday Night Football” game to be streamed live via the service. The social media network is releasing an app Wednesday for the Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Xbox One.