San Francisco, CA – June 16, 2012 – Olympic Club: Phil Mickelson during the 112th US Open
(Photo by Scott Clarke / ESPN Images)
Nearly a month after losing its NFL live streaming deal to Amazon, Twitter touted some key figures from the live sports programming it has left.
In its Q1 2017 letter to shareholders, the social media platform revealed that its live streaming of early-round PGA TOUR LIVE, which it won the exclusive streaming rights earlier this year, has averaged almost half a million unique viewers each day. That number is significantly less than the 3.5 million uniques averaged across 10 NFL games during the 2016 season.
The 60-90 minute morning PGA TOUR LIVE show on Thursday and Friday also includes pre-game analysis, driving range coverage, interviews and live competition from the Marquee Groups on PGA TOUR LIVE, the sports property’s over-the-top subscription service. Additionally, Q1 saw Twitter stream over 800 hours of live video content, including 450 events reaching 45 million unique viewers, with 51 percent of those hours being sports related.
That heavy dose of sports content could potentially see the UFC in the future, as Chief Operating Officer Anthony Noto recently suggested. Despite the loss of the NFL, Noto told BuzzFeed News that the sports and entertainment property might be an attractive option in the future.
“We have a really big audience when there’s a pay-per-view UFC match,” said Noto, who also told BuzzFeed that Twitter will eventually stream video content 24/7. “Should we provide that content to the audience on Twitter that’s not watching it, but might like to after seeing tweets about it? That’s something we’d consider.”
Over the past few months, Twitter has additionally live streamed games from the NHL and MLB, both of which are part of its deal with Major League Baseball Advanced Media that it inked last summer. Similarly, the National Lacrosse League signed a two-year exclusive live streaming rights partnership that will feature “Games of the Week” via the social media platform for the 2017 and 2018 seasons. Esports has also been an area of focus for Twitter as it partnered with ESL and DreamHack to live stream 1,500 hours of content in 2017.
On Wednesday, when asked about live streaming cricket or soccer to reach an international audience, Noto said Twitter “would love to have both sports,” and there’s a “very passionate audience for cricket.”
“Their rights are really expensive and they’re locked up for multi-years,” continued Noto on Twitter’s Q1 earnings call. “That doesn’t mean we can’t partner with different media companies that have those rights. Most of the deals that we do, do not exist. We go in and meet with media owners or content owners and understand what rights they have and then find a way to partner with them, not to just intermediate them, but to partner with them to increase their reach and the economics they can drive against the rights they have and it’s a very differentiated value proposition.”
Noto added that Twitter is “all ears” for discussing live streaming cricket since rights deals are expiring in India. The company was reportedly among those interested in Indian Premier League digital rights in October.
“We can add value to whatever partner wins,” he said.
As of now, Twitter is again particularly concentrated on “international and international interests that are not similar to the United States,” with Noto citing a few examples such as when it streamed the Premier League’s Transfer Day, Six Nations Rugby in France and Deutsche Telekom in Germany. Internationally, Noto also referenced Twitter’s live streaming of the National High School Baseball Tournament (Senbatsu) in Japan.
“The great thing about Twitter is we know your interests,” Noto said. “We can serve those that are niche, we can serve those that are broad and we can do it in an economic way that creates value for our partners both on the content side and on the advertising side.”
