Twitter & Amazon Work To Bring Live Sports Streaming to Their Consumers
Executives at Amazon and Twitter are looking for more ways to bring a variety of sports content to their customers. Both companies spoke at Bloomberg’s Players Technology Summit this past summer in San Francisco stating that their global reach will make them excellent partners with both the NFL and the NBA. Both leagues know many fans are now watching games from their smartphones, so why not target the various demographics using personalized notifications?
“Sports leagues get it,” said Richard Au, Amazon’s director of Prime Video Channels. “They need to make sure the product is relevant across age groups and demographics.”
Amazon is looking to notify patrons about the various live sporting events on their mobile devices. They have purchased the streaming rights to NFL games, Premier League soccer matches, and the Association of Tennis Professionals matches.
Twitter dove head-first into the action by obtaining the rights to stream the NFL’s Thursday Night Football during the 2016 season. Due to the success of the partnership, Amazon actively went after and won the live-streaming rights to the 2017 and 2018 season. Amazon also strengthened its foothold in live video by obtaining the rights to broadcast the NBA G-League minor its Twitch TV.
While Twitter lost out on the rights to Thursday Night Football, they did renew their deal with Major League Baseball to live stream one day game per week throughout the 2018 season. They also signed a 3-year contract with the Major Soccer League that will allow them to live stream at least 24 games per season.
Twitter has strong ties with the NBA and since the league has always been one of the first to adopt new and developing technologies it makes the partnership a perfect fit. You see, the NBA Twitter community is one of the strongest in the world as fans have tweeted about the and the NBA more than any other professional sports league in 2018. Not many platforms in the world allow fans to interact seamlessly and directly with players and journalists.
“NBA Twitter just has this really special connectivity to it that doesn’t exist anywhere else” said TJ Adeshola, Twitter’s head of sports league partnerships. “It’s really reflective of the league’s approach in the broader marketplace to be innovative, to give their players this level of authenticity and connectivity. It’s relatively unprecedented in the sports space, which lends itself to a perfect marriage with a Twitter platform. The league has been the one to lift up the hood and give folks a unique view.”
Twitter understands it is essential to keep the fans involved. Therefore they are continually seeking out new and exciting ways for fans to watch various sporting events. It seems almost obvious that the NBA needs Twitter just as much as Twitter wants to partner with the NBA. By forming a partnership the NBA can bring the games right to the very spot where the fans interact. They will literally never need to leave their phone screen because the NBA games and NBA community is right there at their fingertips.
“We struck partnerships with all of the major leagues, teams, athletes, and broadcasters to bring their incredible content on to our platform. We now have over 300 partnerships with rights holders in more than 25 countries around the world,” says Laura Froelich, global director of sports partnerships at Twitter. “It has allowed us to bring incredible content to fans and helps our sports partners to access those audiences, as well as new audiences that are becoming harder to reach as the media landscapes change.”
According to a 2017 article, 98% of sports marketers choose social media as the top way to leverage sponsorships. Thus, the increase of the various live-streaming sports mediums continue to redefine the way we consume sports. Brands, along with players and teams continue to capitalize on this growing trend. The value of sponsorships today has greatly increased due to vast variety of consumption methods for live sports — or sports highlights. The more face time your brand receives,the better. And 24/7 live-streaming makes it nearly impossible for brands to not see a positive ROI from a sponsorship campaign.
Today’s fans expect more and want even more personalized interaction with their top teams. Individual preferences drive the need to expand the way fans follow and watch sports. How is this achieved — through content. Companies like Amazon and Twitter want to give fans a personalized and all-access pass to both a team and its players. This along with patron discussion will enhance an individual’s game-viewing experience.
