Video content has steadily become the centerpiece of attention for most technology giants in today’s world. With regards to the same, Amazon has reportedly reached an agreement with the U.S. National Football League (NFL) to stream Thursday Night Football games on their Prime Video streaming platform. Amazon is said to have spent around $50 million for the transaction, reports WSJ.
Under this agreement, Amazon is making a dent in the live streaming ecosystem while also attracting users to its Prime subscription services. The e-commerce giant has confirmed the deal, not the financial details, where it stream ten Thursday-night Football games online. It will be available exclusively to Amazon Prime subscribers, along with the free two-day delivery and Music streaming service.
Amazon is said to have one-upped Twitter’s live streaming strategy, which the company had secured for about $10 million last year. It is said to have beat out other online video streaming platforms such as Google’s YouTube, Facebook, and Verizon among others. And for those aloof to online video streaming, you can still continue to watch games on traditional cable TV alternatives — CBS, NBC, and NFL Network.
This is a significant loss for Twitter’s burgeoning live streaming strategy, which started off with NFL live streaming. The company also live streamed the presidential debates, but neither did it attract a large number of viewers nor made it any revenues. It didn’t report its live streaming revenues during the previous quarterly result. In a statement sent to Recode, a Twitter spokesperson comments on the same as under:
The NFL was a great partner to launch our strategy and we will continue to work with them to bring great content to our passionate sports fans.
Further, Twitter is currently building on its live video strategy and is not ready to give up just yet — even though it is facing immense criticism for changes to the platform. First, the micro-blogging platform debuted native Periscope integration on its mobile app last year and then followed it with the release of Producer API a couple weeks ago.
The said API enables media houses and brands to set up their own native live streams on Twitter, without the need for partnerships. Speaking on the continued push for live streaming, a spokesperson adds,
Since last year, we have collaborated on over 40 live stream partnerships and we will continue to bring the best live content to our customers around the world. In Q1 2017, we aired more than 800 hours of live stream content from over 400 events across sports, news, politics and entertainment.
But it is also important to curate the content being hosted on your streaming platform, else it could get you into deep trouble. Yes, I’m talking about the dilemma (read losses!) being faced by YouTube and the majority of content creators. The renowned video streaming service has recently been accused of surfacing ads alongside content promoting terrorism, white nationalism, and even homophobia. Most advertisers, close to 250, have pulled their campaigns from the platform and YouTube has now detailed measures to pacify their anxious brand partners. It is even employing AI and machine learning algos to take a stringent stance against such content.
