Earlier this year, the NFL announced a partnership with Twitter to live-stream 10 Thursday Night Football games online. The deal was a bit of a surprise at the time since we haven't seen how Twitter handles live-streaming events. The league broadcasted a game through Yahoo last season, and many thought the NFL would pick Facebook with its semi-proven Facebook Live platform (and larger audience).
But Twitter earned the deal, and on Wednesday we got to see a rough draft of its live-streaming format. Twitter and ESPN teamed to provide live coverage of Wimbledon, although there are limitations as to what they can show. Since ESPN has exclusive rights to the tennis events, Twitter's service couldn't show any of the actual matches (only replays).
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We do, however, get to see what Twitter is thinking about before it hits the big stage with Thursday Night Football.
Live @ Wimbledon - Day 9. Watch LIVE now: https://t.co/JI7WEdvcQQ … #Wimbledon
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 6, 2016
Before we dissect the platform too much, it's important to note that the site is in the early stages of what they want to do.
"Twitter is increasingly a place where people can find live-streaming video, and that includes exciting sporting events like Wimbledon," the company said in a statement to ReCode. "This live-stream is an extremely early and incomplete test experience, and we'll be making lots of improvements before we launch it in its final form."
The format on desktop shows the live-streaming video on the left with a timeline featuring anything involving Wimbledon on the right. There's no profanity that shows up on the timeline provided, but there are spam tweets that come through. It seems like pretty much anything that mentions Wimbledon, or uses the official hashtags, that's not profane, will show up.
Something Twitter can work on by the time the product is closer to its final stages is providing an option to see your own timeline, along with the video. It's kind of interesting to see various tweets on the topic, but when I go on Twitter, I want to read the tweets from people I follow.
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As for the video portion, there needs to be more options in the player. Right now, there's a stop button, a mute button and a full screen option. When you hit stop, and then play, it just resumes from where you last left off. There should be a "live" button that takes you back to what's currently airing. The only way to do that now is to refresh the page, which can take a while to load depending on your connection.
On mobile, the video appears at the top of the screen, with the timeline of tweets below. When you scroll down through, the video gets slightly smaller, and black bars appear on the side. Maybe this is a personal preference, but I'd rather have the video sit atop in its original size (which goes edge to edge) instead of getting smaller.
The quality of the video is nice. I experienced only a few hiccups during which it would buffer, but overall the stream worked fine. The NFL deal will include ads, so we'll have to wait and see how those will be incorporated.
Overall, the initial setup is very basic, and there are still many things Twitter can work on. But the ability to see Twitter's conversation alongside the video is something only they can provide, and is a large selling point for its buyers. Live-tweeting is a large part of sports, and it's cool to be able to do it right away as you watch in-platform.
