In 2016, Twitter paid a reported $10 million for streaming rights to 10 “Thursday Night Football” games. But as digital rights grew more expensive, drew small viewership and were difficult to monetize, Twitter has declined to get into bidding wars and instead decided to become a partner with rights holders like NBC.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
NBC pays handsomely for the Olympics — $4.38 billion for the rights to four Games, including those in 2020 — and puts them at the center of its calendar every two years. Its broadcast channel wins the ratings wars each night of the Games (something NBC never fails to tout) and cable channels like NBCSN, USA and CNBC receive huge viewership bumps as well.
Fans can stream almost every minute of every Olympic event online through NBC’s Olympics website, but only if they already pay for a more traditional television package and sign in through their provider. As limited as NBC’s agreement with Twitter is, it represents both the best bet for those without television to watch the Olympics and for NBC to reach that cord-cutting audience — which skews young — and bring them into the NBC fold.
NBC first signed a live digital rights agreement with Snapchat, for the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Snapchat has a larger active user base than Twitter, but it can be difficult to share videos, and users needed to go to its Discover platform to see Olympics coverage.
Olympics advertisers will be able to sponsor the coverage that appears on Twitter, a sales process led by NBC that will help further enmesh big advertisers into the Games and extend NBC’s reach in selling them. NBC and L.A. 2028, the organizing committee for the 2028 Games, recently announced a partnership in which NBC will lead all advertising and sponsorship sales for the next four Olympics, beginning in 2021.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/sports/olympics/nbc-twitter-olympics.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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