Live NFL games may soon stream on Apple TV via a new Twitter app.
The New York Times reported Monday that Twitter is in talks with Apple create an app for the Apple TV platform that will let people watch live NFL games.
Twitter paid the NFL a reported $10 million earlier this year to stream 10 Thursday Night Football games this season. It may leverage that partnership to stream the live content via Apple TV, giving Twitter another avenue to reach users.
Fans outside the U.S. can already watch official NFL content on Apple TV via NFL Game Pass, but live games aren’t streamed in the U.S.
Along with the NFL deal, Twitter has recently partnered with several other leagues, from the NBA to MLB, to stream live sports. It’s a new push for Twitter to make its service a centralized hub for live content and social commentary as it struggles to add more users and earn more advertising dollars.
However, outside of the NFL deal, most of Twitter’s deals thus far are for “edge content” — not primetime games that broadcast giants pay big bucks for — as Recode’s Peter Kafka noted:
With the exception of the NFL games, all of Twitter's TV deals to date are for edge content — the stuff TV guys don't care about.
— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) August 15, 2016
what they are really doing is licensing a bunch of cheap content as a marketing tactic. not a bad experiment.
— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) August 15, 2016
Still, these live streaming deals are key to Twitter’s growth strategy and could expand over time as the company competes with other tech giants like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Amazon, and Google. Twitter CFO Anthony Noto last month laid out key competitive advantages that separate Twitter from others when it comes to hosting a live-streaming experience, which you can read here.
