SAN FRANCISCO — Last March, Twitter and Facebook, along with other tech companies, faced off over which of them would get the rights to live-stream National Football League games on Thursday nights.

Twitter, in a rare win against larger rivals, emerged victorious with the deal. The N.F.L. saw disadvantages with some of the other bids. Facebook, for example, had set tough terms, under which the social network wanted to sell all the ads that would air during the football games, essentially cutting out the sales relationship between the N.F.L. and marketers, according to two people who asked for anonymity because the discussions were private.

Twitter, in contrast, agreed to pay the N.F.L. around $10 million to stream 10 games and to sell only a portion of the ad inventory exclusively. Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, wanted the Thursday night games because of their popularity; each game drew an average of 13 million viewers last season.

“Having that live programming every night when sports are playing — with no paywall, no logging in and directly from the source — that’s key to us,” said Anthony Noto, the chief financial officer for Twitter and formerly for the N.F.L., who helped forge the streaming deal.