The National Football League will air its first ever game via the social media site Twitter when the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets do battle on Thursday.
In attempting to improve the reach of its ever-growing product, the league has also partnered with Twitter to create an app that enables fans to stream Thursday Night Football on Microsoft’s Xbox One, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.
This is a rather interesting turn for the NFL. It’s a league that has always attempted to corner the product for its market.
From a blockage of YouTube users being able to embed videos to a crackdown of third-party Vine posts, this has had a major impact on how fans view the league itself.
It also gives fans an ability to actually catch Thursday Night Football away from the confines of broadcast television. That started with the relationship the NFL created with Twitter and has now extended to other formats.
“These devices will bring Twitter’s live streaming video experience to life on the TV screen,” Twitter chief financial officer Anthony Noto said, via Cord Cutter News. “Twitter has always been a great complement to TV, and now fans can enjoy even more premium video with live Tweets — and the best content on Twitter — right from their TVs.”
Noto went on to explain that viewing capability won’t require a log on to Twitter or any sort of a paywall.
That has to be considered huge news for those of us who are into alternatives to the mainstream broadcasts of these mid-week games. It also promises to increase the popularity of both the NFL and Twitter — two entities that are already growing at a rapid rate today.