Twitter last night at its first-ever NewFronts presentation in N.Y. unveiled a heightened video strategy, leaning even more heavily into premium-level live content than it did during a flurry of sports-related deals struck last year. The S.F.-based company announced a broad series of new and expanded sports and entertainment partnerships, including ones with the WNBA, MLBAM, NFL, 120 Sports, The Players' Tribune, PGA Tour, Bloomberg News, BuzzFeed, Live Nation, Viacom and Vox Media’s The Verge, among others. The new 120 Sports alignment will see the creation of Stadium, the new brand name for the merging of 120 Sports, Silver Chalice’s Campus Insiders and Sinclair’s American Sports Network. Stadium will include a 24-hour live stream on Twitter that will include live college events, highlights, classic games and daily studio programming. An expanded alignment with MLBAM will add to the weekly live games already happening on Twitter with a new three-hour, weekly whiparound MLB show. While live NFL "Thursday Night Football" rights shifted to Amazon for the ’17 season, Twitter will still show live pre-game video and on-demand highlights from the league.
DIRECT CONNECTION: Meanwhile, The Players' Tribune deal includes a new series titled "#Verified" that will allow athletes to connect directly with fans on Twitter in real time. Financial details were not disclosed. "#Verified" will be a live show and will feature T'Wolves C Karl-Anthony Towns, Bengals WR A.J. Green and Seahawks CB Richard Sherman, among others. The show will debut in the coming months. Twitter COO Anthony Noto in a statement said that the agreement would bring exclusive live video from high profile athletes to the Twitter platform.
