While it’s yet to be determined what week the Pittsburgh Steelers will play on Thursday night when it comes to their 2016 schedule, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to watch that game live on Twitter in some capacity.
NFL commissioner Roger Goddell confirmed Tuesday that Twitter will be live-streaming ten Thursday Night Football games this fall. While the social media giant has bought the rights to stream games this upcoming season, CBS, NBC and the NFL Network will also do the same. In January, CBS and NBC reportedly paid roughly $450 million combined for the rights to broadcast the same ten games.
According to several Tuesday reports, the live streams will only be available through Twitter’s app on phones, tablets and some Internet-connected TV sets. There’s still some uncertainly as to how much the NFL is charging Twitter to broadcast the games on their platform but it’s probably safe to say it’s a lot less than the $45 million per game that the other two networks will pay.
Twitter, of course, must now figure out a way to monetize their broadcasted games through advertising and that’s something the company seems to have a hard time doing in general when it comes to their platform. They now have one year to figure it out. According to their site, Twitter currently has 320 million active users and 80 percent of those are active mobile users.
In related news, it was also reported this week that the league’s Color Rush campaign will be back for 2016, and this time, it’s going to involve every team that plays Thursday night. The 2016 NFL schedule is expected to be released in mid-April and at that time the roll out of the Color Rush uniforms for all teams is expected to take place.
Last season, the Steelers played two of their regular season games on Thursday nights and that included their road opener against the New England Patriots and their Week 4 home game against the Baltimore Ravens. They ultimately lost both of those games, however.
