NFL To Stream Thursday Football Games On Twitter

On Tuesday, the NFL announced it had awarded streaming rights to its package of Thursday primetime games to Twitter. According to the league, Twitter will pay about $15 million for ten games. Those games will air on broadcast television on either CBS or NBC and also on cable's NFL Network. As part of the deal, Twitter will also streaam exclusive pre- and postgame highlights.

Twitter won the streaming rights following negotiations that at various points including Yahoo and Facebook as well as several mobile phone companies. While it is believed that Twitter's offer wasn't the most lucrative, it was chosen in part because the company would allow the national commercials sold by it's broadcast partners to also run during the streaming version. In exchange, Twitter also will have the rights to sell commercials in the spots usually reserved for local broadcast TV ads.