Twitter Inc TWTR debuted its free live stream of Thursday Night Football's NFL games last week. The latest data from TickerTags indicate that the stream was a big hit among sports fans.
TickerTags monitors social media sites to identify trends by searching for words or phrases that appear together in social media content, such as tweets.
Twitter’s live Thursday night NFL stream was the first of its kind and was open to viewers with and without Twitter accounts. Following the broadcast, social media sentiment surrounding the event was overwhelmingly positive. The NFL stream generated four positive social media mentions for every one negative mention.
Twitter could be building the foundation for a major push into live streaming. The company has struggled to find a long-term growth source, and it has been investing heavily in deals with major sports leagues. In addition to the NFL, Twitter has deals in place with Wimbledon, the NBA, the NHL MLB and CBS News.
“Twitter doesn’t want to be the world’s newspaper,” The Ringer’s Kate Knibbs explained. “It wants to be the world’s basic cable network.”
NFL broadcasts played a pivotal role in the rise of both Walt Disney Co DIS’s ESPN and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc FOX FOXA’s Fox Sports. Twitter may be looking to replicate the two sports networks’ success among a new generation of cord-cutters.
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