Twitter is taking a turn to live sports broadcasting as the app inked a deal with Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League to live stream weekly out-of-market.
120 Sports, the OTT network—a source for multi-sport highlights, live-looks-ins, interviews, analysis, and commentary, integrated with real-time social conversation and trending sports topics—will also produce an exclusive, nightly multi-sports highlights show called ‘The Rally’, to be streamed live on Twitter. The MLB, NHL, and 120 Sports streaming rights come through Twitter’s new partnership with MLBAM.
“Twitter is the fastest way to see what’s unfolding in MLB and the NHL,” said Anthony Noto, Twitter CFO. “MLBAM has pioneered streaming live digital video and we could not be more excited to partner with them on live games as well as ‘The Rally’, giving our audience the live sports events they are already talking about on one screen on Twitter.”
“Twitter has long been a great partner and platform for both baseball and hockey fans as they follow their favorite teams and players every day,” said Kenny Gersh, MLBAM EVP of business. “We know fans will embrace what this wide-ranging partnership brings – expanded and reliable access to live baseball and hockey and the introduction of Twitter’s first daily live highlight show delivered intuitively to a platform where they’re actively engaged with the games.”
“Twitter has become a crucial forum and engagement tool for hockey fans to enhance their NHL viewing experience and stay connected to the game on and off the ice,” said Stephen McArdle, NHL EVP of digital media and strategic planning. “We are excited that fans will now be able to enjoy live NHL games through our partnership with Twitter.”
The once-per-week live streams of out-of-market MLB and NHL games will be available free to logged-in and logged-out Twitter users in the United States. MLB games also will be available worldwide, except in select international territories. A schedule for the MLB and NHL games will be available at a later date.
