Microblogging come messaging service Twitter, Inc. has signed a deal with the National Football League (NFL) to stream 10 Thursday night National Football League games during the 2016 season.

Neither the NFL or Twitter confirmed the amount of the deal although Bloomberg puts the cost of the deal at $10 million.

Twitter is said to have won the rights over other, more likely providers in a bidding war that included Verizon Communications, Inc., Yahoo, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc. and Facebook, Inc., with Yahoo having previously held the streaming rights during the previous, 2015 season.

Although not confirmed Twitter is likely to show the games alongside a live feed of curated tweets that are streamed through its website and mobile app, potentially as part of its “Moments” feature, with Bloomberg suggesting that the stream may also be embeddable on third party sites, giving it further reach than Twitter users alone.

What the NFL did confirm however is that the Twitter stream will come with a number of unique features, including unique in-game highlights from each game along with a pre-game Periscope broadcasts from players and teams that is said to give fans “an immersive experience before, during and after games.”

“Twitter is where live events unfold and is the right partner for the NFL as we take the latest step in serving fans around the world live NFL football,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.  “There is a massive amount of NFL-related conversation happening on Twitter during our games and tapping into that audience, in addition to our viewers on broadcast and cable, will ensure Thursday Night Football is seen on an unprecedented number of platforms this season. This agreement also provides additional reach for those brands advertising with our broadcast partners.”

Bizarre

The deal makes sense for the NFL in that it maximizes its potential audience for its Thursday night games, football games that have not been as popular to watch as its more established Friday Night Football.

For Twitter however the deal is simply bizarre; yes, you can see it as Twitter attracting more people to use their site and/ or apps, but the thing is Twitter is not an online broadcasting provider, it literally has zero experience in the space, and viewers may not necessarily flock to Twitter to watch the game anyway given it will still be available to hardcore fans on NBC, CBS and the NFL Network at the same time.

$10 million though is pocket change to a company like Twitter so maybe at this relatively low price it’s worthy of a shot, be it one potentially having the opposite of Tom Brady-like ball tampering problems, in that the ball here is over inflated and harder to catch.

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