It was only a matter of time until a streaming or social service won the rights to air a major league sport. Twitter has done just that with the NFL for Thursday Night Football, as first reported by Bloomberg. It will stream 10 games throughout the season for a price of $10 million.

Twitter wasn’t the only interested party. It outbid Verizon, Amazon and Yahoo for the rights. The latter online platform has already live-streamed a regular season NFL game with success. It aired the game to 15 million unique viewers—though it was one of the lesser-viewed match-ups, between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars. With the Twitter deal, the 10 games will also be broadcast on NBC, CBS and NFL Network.

The move will allow the NFL to expand its digital reach beyond cable subscribers, and, with the ability to embed Twitter’s live stream on other websites, Twitter will expand its audience as well.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is making moves with another major league sport: MLB. It’s streaming one game each day for free—that’s 180 games—with the commercials, too. And it also live streamed NHL games.

Expect to see more leagues, more often, getting into the digital game—and the competition to buy those rights from digital and mobile players to increase.

The Daily

Subscribe

Weekly Ratings

Fox News carried a dominant stretch into another week after sweeping the weekly primetime and total day ratings among cable nets. The news net nearly tripled second place in prime, recording an

Read the Full Issue
The Skinny is delivered on Tuesday and focuses on the cable profession. You'll stay in the know on the headlines, topics and special issues you value most. Sign Up

Calendar

Apr 16
Cablefax 100 Awards CFX100 2025 List to be published 4/16/25
May 7
2025 Faxies Awards Faxies Nominations Open! Final deadline: 3/14/25
Full Calendar

Jobs

Seeking an INDUSTRY JOB or hiring for one?
VIEW JOBS

In conjunction with our sister brand, Cynopsis, we are offering hiring managers a deep pool of media-savvy, skilled candidates at a range of experience levels and sectors. The result will be an even more robust industry job board, to help both employers and job seekers.

Contact Carley Ashley, [email protected], for more information about posting a job on the website and our Jobs newsletter, sent twice weekly to 85,000 media professionals.