Twitter broadcast over 330 hours of live sports programming in the fourth quarter as the social media site continued its over-the-top evolution. Speaking to the Leaders Sport Business Summit on Tuesday, Twitter COO Anthony Noto said that Twitter beamed more than 600 hours of live events, 55% of which were sports (the other 45% were news and entertainment). Currently, access to the events is free, and that does not appear likely to change greatly in the near term. "We will consider all economic models that deliver value to the platform, but we have to do it in stages," Noto said. "We will go down a path of different models, such as subscription or pay-per-view." Twitter broadcasts a wide range of sports, from lacrosse to its well-known Thursday Night NFL package. During those games, which are not exclusive, Noto said, tweet impressions tripled and video views doubled from what they had been without the games. But it is not just big sports like the NFL, NBA and MLB, Noto said. He pointed out that darts has 200,000 followers on Twitter. "I am not sure anyone is thinking about dart content," he said. Twitter is unperturbed with sharing rights with other mediums, Noto said. These deals add incremental audience to Twitter’s partners, and add value to the platform’s social experience. Thus far, the live events are what Noto described as "economically positive overall."
QUICK HITS:
- U.S. broadcaster Turner President David Levy said of the rise of digital companies such as Facebook and Twitter acquiring media rights, "They've all been small deals so far. But the bigger question is with the leagues themselves. What is the next generation of fans? And they have to figure out where they want to put their content for the next generation."
- On measuring viewing audiences amid the rise of over-the-top and on-demand platforms, he said, "The current research currency, Nielsen, hasn’t caught up with technology. They haven’t figured out how to capture all of the audience. Live, same-day viewing they can handle, which is good for sports, but there are still issues elsewhere."
- On the rise of Turner’s ELeague, which is done in partnership with WME-IMG: "This is a global phenomenon, and one we knew we needed to get into. This is something that isn’t going away" (Eric Fisher, SportsBusiness Journal).
