Twitter's deal with the NFL to stream 10 games could be a turning point in the platform's growth, and since the announcement other sporting codes want to replicate it, Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey tells AdNews.
It is believed Twitter beat Facebook, Amazon and Verizon for the $10 million digital rights to show live NFL game footage on Thursday night - a first for a social media platform.
Speaking to AdNews on his first trip to Australia, Dorsey says the deal is an “evolution” for Twitter because people have spent the past 10 years tweeting about sport as they watched it live, but now they can do both in one space, on the one screen.
Dorsey explained that since the deal was revealed, other sporting codes have enquired about working with the social network in a similar way.
“The NFL is interesting because it's such an influencer, so as soon as we announced that deal, pretty much every league in the world asked us to do something similar,” he says.
“[The sports administrators said] we know people are tweeting about our games, they love it and we want to amplify that even more and provide an even better experience around it for our fans, and get them to connect with each other and get them to connect with us more directly.”
Dorsey came back on board as Twitter's CEO six months ago, and since then the company has been shouting the mantra “Jack's Back”. Since coming back to the top job he cemented a vision for the business, which sees it focus on what it's best at - being live and real-time.
“The reason we're going to get it right this time and continue to build strength is because we're going to continue to focus on what Twitter is great at, and that is live events and live experiences,” he says.
“Twitter is not the contact book or the address book that I bring from my phone, it's the people that I meet who are aligned around a a topic. Whether it's about a rugby match, a protest or a national event or a crisis, you see all these interesting people that you connect with and you meet, and you want to follow beyond the event,” he added.
Dorsey was in Australia to talk about Square, the payments business he launched when he left Twitter the first time. He says that the fin-tech industry in Australia is quite mature, but what Square can offer this market is cohesion between collecting payments and how a business is run.
You can catch AdNew's full Q&A with the Twitter CEO and Founder in the latest issue of AdNews (15 April), you can get in print, on iPad, or digitally here.
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