Bob Peck Reviews Twitter's NFL Deal: It's All About Branding And User Engagement

Shares of Twitter Inc TWTR continued to surge on Wednesday, after the company won a deal with the National Football League (NFL) to live stream Thursday Night Football.

Related Link: NFL Is The Real Winner From Twitter Deal, Angel Investor Says

Following the announcement, SunTrust’s Bob Peck shared some thoughts.

The LIVE Deal

“In a big step towards marrying Twitter’s LIVE mission with its already strong NFL relationship, Twitter has won the rights to live stream the Thursday night NFL games at a cost of <$10M per Recode,” the report explicated. The social network will rebroadcast CBS and NBC’s feeds.

The networks will still retain broadcast rights and control of most of the digital ad inventory. Twitter, for its part, will control a small proportion of ads for each game, pregame Periscopes and highlight content. However, it will still run against digital streams from CBS and NBC.

Analysts at SunTrust believe that “while this may have a modest impact to revenues and is likely a loss leader, that it is more brand building for Twitter being ‘Live.’” In addition, they think that, “any acceleration to MAU growth and engagement is more important than any impact to near term profits, particularly if the MAU growth can be sustained.”

SunTrust maintains a Buy rating on shares of Twitter.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.