Who Will Get Streaming Rights to NFL Thursday Night Football?

The NFL has once again opened the bidding process for streaming rights to Thursday Night Football games. Last year, the league took proposals from Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, ultimately accepting a low $10 million offer from Twitter to live stream 10 games unauthenticated.

The same four companies are in the running again, reports Recode, but the conclusion is far from certain. While Twitter got a lot of press for its live NFL streams, and boasted an audience of 3.5 million for each game, it only had a few hundred thousand viewers at any one time. The deal will again include a license to stream 10 games.

The lack of interactivity or unique online features with the Twitter feed left many wanting more, and latency was a problem since the live stream was 10 seconds behind broadcast.

"If platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or Snapchat want to become real OTT powerhouses, they’re going to need to offer something unusual, something that broadcast and cable can’t provide," wrote StreamingMedia.com editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen. "You have to figure that Twitter knows this, and you’d hope that its plans include giving viewers more control over their feeds while they’re watching the game."

Look for the NFL to make its choice in the next month.

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