Twitter just lost its marquee video deal with the NFL to Amazon
Twitter won't stream the NFL's Thursday Night Football games again this year.
Instead, Amazon has won the rights to stream 10 of the NFL's games, both companies announced on Tuesday. Amazon paid a whopping $50 million for the deal, according to The Wall Street Journal.
That number is a fivefold increase from the $10 million Twitter reportedly paid the NFL for the same rights in 2016. The deal was a landmark one for both sides at the time, and it signaled Twitter's growing ambitions to become a destination for premium live video.
Twitter had boasted of the NFL deal as a key plank in its plan to reignite its sluggish user growth and to transform itself as the place to go to follow live events. But some advertisers reportedly found the audience for football games on Twitter to be underwhelming.
Losing the rights to stream Thursday Night Football is an embarrassing loss for Twitter, especially given that its COO/CFO Anthony Noto is the former NFL CFO.
Twitter, Amazon, Facebook, and YouTube had all bid to win the rights to this year's football season, according to Recode.
While Twitter streamed Thursday Night Football for free to everyone, Amazon will restrict its streams to its paying Prime subscribers. NBC, CBS, and Verizon will also stream the games live to their subscribers.
Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.