Twitter All in With Sports, News, Entertainment Video at NewFront
Twitter may no longer have Thursday Night Football, but as it showed during its first ever newfront presentation tonight, live video—and sports in particular—is central to its future. The social networking platform lured advertisers with a raft of live streaming partnerships, including deals with the WNBA, NFL, and MLBAM.
During the event, Twitter executives highlighted the personalization, social interaction, and immediate access the platform provides.
"Every piece of content that we've shown you already and that we'll show you tonight is available in the palm of your hand," said Twitter chief operating officer Anthony Noto.
Starting later this month, Twitter and the WNBA will partner on a three-year agreement to stream one regular season game live each week, for a total of 20 games per season. Twitter is also working with Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) to create a live three-hour weekly show. Available only on Twitter, the still unnamed show will discuss top moments form the previous week. Twitter announced a similar deal with The Players' Tribune, creating an exclusive live show that presents athletes sharing their thoughts on events from both inside and outside the world of sports.
Twitter and the NFL aren't done just yet. This fall, the NFL will create a daily show airing Sundays through Thursdays based on NFL news. The partnership includes pre-game live video and on-demand highlights.
Twitter and the PGA Tour announced they're deepening their partnership, and will offer over 70 hours of live coverage from 31 upcoming tournaments. Twitter and Periscope viewers can enjoy 360º video from the 17th hole of the Players Championship at golf club TPC Sawgrass later this month.
Twitter is picking up the Live Nation music streaming that used to belong to Yahoo, While it won't offer the same one-concert-per-day, it will stream "select Live Nation concerts and original content" (as a Twitter press statement said) beginning with a Zac Brown Band concert on May 13. Twitter is also creating live shows with The Verge and BuzzFeed, and expanding its relationship with Cheddar (its successful New York Stock Exchange show Closing Bell will now be bookended by a similar morning show called Opening Bell). Finally, Twitter will work with Viacom to create red carpet pre-shows for the MTV Movie and TV Awards, BET Awards, and MTV Video Music Awards.
"We want to be the first place that anyone hears of anything that matters to them," said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. "We want to be the first answer and we want to be the best answer."
Dorsey also made an appearance at the Bloomberg NewFront earlier in the day, where he and Bloomberg LP founder Michael Bloomberg announced their companies are partnering to create a round-the-clock news network, as yet unnamed. Debuting this fall, the network will combine editorial content from Bloomberg with immediate tweets, photos, and videos from Twitter's community. Advertisers were promised brand safety at scale. That might have been the NewFront Season's first mention of brand safety, but it won't be the last.
The discussion between Bloomberg and Dorsey was mostly about entrepreneurship. Bloomberg credited his company's success to "a willingness to try new things and never let the bastards beat you." Dorsey said, "The biggest enemy of creating something is thinking about it too much."
Bloomberg (the company) also announced its re-launch on Apple TV. Available today, the updated channel includes 24/7 news with live video. Advertisers can work with Bloomberg to create custom brand integrations.
Bloomberg TV anchor Emily Chang, Michael Bloomberg, and Jack Dorsey at the Bloomberg NewFront
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