Twitter is adding a suite of new sports and gaming programming to its live video line up

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Lately, Twitter has been giving live video a lot of importance, but it may be for different reasons than what you expect. The company’s main reason for bulking up live video is to build deeper connections with targeted audiences on Twitter via partnerships with sports leagues and media companies.

Yesterday, Twitter announced multiple new deals at its Digital Content NewFronts presentation in New York. Twitter revealed some new deals with previous partners and also unveiled a new deal with Univision Communications to bring more premium sports, news, and other content to Twitter’s U.S. Hispanic users. Twitter also announced that it will be adding content from the likes of The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine.

Twitter announced some pretty interesting new partnerships at the same time

This includes partnerships with the NBA, MLB, PGA Tour, BuzzFeed News, Fox Sports, Bill Simmons’ The Ringer, CNN, Marvel, and the Drone Racing League. Twitter’s global VP and head of content partnerships, Kay Madati, says, “Together with our partners, we developed this new slate of programming specifically for our audiences, and designed the content to fuel even more robust conversation on Twitter.”

Here are all of Twitter’s partnerships within Sports and Gaming;

• ESPN: “ESPN Onsite” will be the brand extension of the sports broadcaster’s live shows, encompassing existing ESPN franchises on Twitter like “The College Football Show,” “Hoop Streams,” “Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show,” and “MLS Countdown Live.” In addition, ESPN will add Onsite branding on Twitter around other tentpole events when they are on location.
• NFL: As part of a multi-year partnership extension, the league will continue to program video highlights, breaking news, and analysis, and will also include new live shows anchored around NFL tentpole events including the NFL Draft.
• The Players’ Tribune: Launching talk show called “Don’t @ Me,” an interactive live broadcast featuring two athletes debating every “greatest of all time” topic under the sun, featuring notable comments from Twitter users and fan voting to determine the winner of the debates.
• MLS: Soccer league’s multiyear extension of its Twitter agreement will continue to provide highlights and a slate of live matches in English (via @UnivisionSports and @MLS). In addition, MLS will post every goal on Twitter.
• WarnerMedia’s Bleacher Report: House of Highlights, the hoops brand that was born on Instagram, is coming back to Twitter for season 2 of its highlights show with athletes and celebs joining Omar Raja, founder of House of Highlights.
• Blizzard Entertainment: For its BlizzCon 2019 gaming convention (Nov. 1–2), Blizzard will deliver a selection of content to Twitter for the first time, including the entirety of the opening ceremony, behind-the-scenes interviews and live broadcasts, and clips and highlights of game-developer panels and esports tournaments.

What do you think? Will this bring more people to the platform? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Murtaza Islam

Murtaza is a Computer Science student who takes immense interest in mobile technology. He believes the future of computing lies in smartphones because ARM architecture will eventually take over. He also loves to tinker with ROMs and kernels keeping up with the latest in smartphones.