The Unlikely Duo of Twitter and Thursday Night Football

Twitter is now the newest platform to view National Football League games.  Twitter has created a new feature to use for “Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Microsoft’s Xbox One” (Benner, 2016).  It will also be available for through smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc.  At this time, it will only be airing the Thursday Night football games, not all games.  It will also air sporting events of the MLB, Pac-10 athletic collegiate conference, and a few other sources of entertainment. 

            So, you are probably getting a pretty clear picture of what the product is by now.  It can hook right up to your streaming device or through your smartphone and bring you live entertainment by multiple sources and sports.  What makes this any better than another experience?  That could probably be answered by taking a peek at the price.

            At this point, you are probably asking yourself, “What’s the catch?”  There is no catch!  The app is free!  That’s right, the price of the new feature that allows someone to stream live entertainment, such as Thursday Night Football, is free!  You do not need to buy an Apple TV or smartphone, but just download the app for this new service by twitter.

            It also couldn’t be easier to catch the free, live streaming action.  As mentioned above, it is offered through devices like Apple TV and smartphones.  This means that the action could take place in the comfort of your own home.  The product is relatively new though.  It was just released on Wednesday.  The places that the app is available are thestreaming devices mentioned in the opening paragraph.

            Since twitter is a social media platform, then what is it doing streaming live events on Apple TV, or Amazon Fire?  This answer can be found in the new strategy of the company.  A strategy is commonly known as a plan or plan of action for the long-term goals of a company.  This new app is a step in the right direction of hopefully achieving the goal to “increase its user base” (Benner, 2016).  The company plans to reach this goal by “drawing a large mainstream audience” (Benner, 2016).  Twitter is hoping that their new strategy will be able to reach more audiences that are not familiar with, or do not care much for, their main product, which is a social media platform. 

            However, Twitter is taking a fairly large risk on their venture into this new territory.  Twitter will be paying the NFL “around $1 Million a game” for their streaming rights, which they beat Facebook for (Benner, 2016).  Since the risk is large, the profit that they are hoping for will be larger.  The profit is the reward a company receives in exchange for undertaking a risk and creating something of value within the offerings. 

            If Twitter came to this strategy decision by environmental scanning, they most likely focused on the social, technological, and competitive forces over the economy and regulatory forces.  The new technology was innovated by companies like Apple and Amazon to reach a new audience.  Then the new features for these devices were invented and Twitter was forced to keep up.  This new audience created the social forces that helped Twitter to see the wave of new customers that use things like Apple TV over regular cable television.  Finally, they had to beat out large players like Facebook and other technologically advanced companies in order to gain the rights to stream the NFL games.

            This new service by Twitter is very new and very exciting.  It is definitely different for social media company to be expanding into this area of technology. 

References:

Benner, Katie. "New Twitter App Streams N.F.L. Games and Other Sports." N.p., 14 Sept. 2016. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/technology/new-twitter-app-streams-nfl-games-and-other-sports.html?ref=business&_r=0>.