Twitter and the NFL have announced a new ad partnership, allowing the social media company to share instant-replay footage from the league via sponsored tweets.
According to a report on Reuters, “Under the new agreement, the NFL will package in-game highlights and other video content – as well as a short ad from a marketer – inside tweets that are ‘sponsored’ and distributed by the marketer during games.” Without giving specifics, Reuters claims that the NFL and Twitter will split revenue earned from the sponsored Tweets.
The announcement confirmed that the new deal is Twitter’s largest sports-related agreement, and is made possible by the social media site’s Amplify service which was introduced in May. Amplify allows television programmers to tweet short video clips that include brief ads at the beginning of the videos, generating ad dollars for both Twitter and television programmers.
“Twitter understands the value of incremental consumption and engagement. That means they’re able to do things with people like us that perhaps other people in social media or technology in general are not,” said the NFL’s chief operating officer Brian Rolapp in an article on AllThingsD.com, “It’s not by happenstance that we’re doing this with them.”
The Reuter’s report names Verizon as the “premiere sponsor” for the agreement between Twitter and the NFL, clarifying that communications company will have exclusive ad rights on Twitter during next year’s Super Bowl, adding that the NFL says, “It expects to have another national sponsor soon.”
This deal is one more step toward increasing Twitter’s profitability, adding to its advertising opportunities as the site nears its IPO.
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