NFL Renews Twitter Deal for Two More Years, Hands Over Ad Sales Duties

The NFL has picked up Twitter's contract for another couple seasons. Twitter and the NFL have extended for two years their partnership that syndicates the league's videos, including in-game highlights, across the social network with pre-roll ads appended to make both sides money. Twitter and the NFL had shared ad sales duties, but now Twitter will take the lead on ad sales, according to an NFL spokesman. Under the renewed deal, the NFL will post "significantly more official NFL content than in the past," according to a press release Monday. That daily content will include in-game highlights throughout the pre-season, regular season and playoffs; breaking news; game recaps; top plays; behind-the-scenes clips; and archived footage. It also "breaks new ground in ... brand integration with NFL content on Twitter," according to the release, though it's unclear what that means. An NFL spokesman referred a question about that brand integration to a Twitter spokeswoman, who did not immediately respond on Monday morning. "Over the past two years, NFL content on Twitter has seen best-in-class user engagement rates, and the expanded partnership will bolster the fan experience on the platform," said Glenn Brown, Twitter's head of content partnerships and its Amplify video ad sales program, in a statement. As Re/code pointed out earlier on Monday, it looks like the renewed agreement will carry over into Twitter's upcoming live-events product. Called Project Lightning, the product will curate tweets specific to live events -- like an NFL game -- into a dedicated feed that anyone can check out while the event is going on. In addition to its deal with Twitter, the NFL also has deals in place with Facebook and Google's YouTube to post ad-supported videos to those services. And the league struck a deal with Yahoo earlier this year to stream a live 2015 regular season game on the portal's video service for free viewing.

NFL Renews Twitter Deal for Two More Years, Hands Over Ad Sales Duties

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