Twitter Chooses Wimbledon To Test Live Sports Feature

Twitter, Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) continues to bet big on “live” feature. Yesterday, the social media service live streamed free Wimbledon coverage for its users.

Per media reports, Twitter partnered with Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) ESPN, which has the telecast rights for Wimbledon since 2011, to live stream highlights and analysis of the match on a separate page. On the desktop version of the page, the right hand side displayed tweets while video was streamed on the left hand side.

Yesterday’s live streaming is important as Twitter gears up to live stream NFL games. Earlier this year, Twitter won the streaming rights for 10 NFL games beating the likes of Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) .

The live feature is really emerging as a big growth opportunity and Twitter is working all the more to boost live experiences to battle troubled user growth. Live streaming, especially big sporting events like NFL, is a sure shot way to attract more users as well as boost advertising revenues. As per a Recode Report, Twitter’s ad prices for each NFL game are pegged somewhere between $2 million to $8 million.

Social media companies have started to go full throttle with video viewing. Online video is the most lucrative component of digital advertising. As video ads generate more revenues than their photo and text-based counterparts, companies are trying to incorporate more and more video oriented content to bring in more ad dollars.As per an e-marketer report, U.S online ad spending will be to the tune of $9.8 billion in 2016, up 22.7% year over year, and will reach a staggering $16.7 billion by 2020.

Not just Twitter, Facebook is also ramping up its video content efforts. The company recently signed deals with a number of celebrities and media houses to churn out live content for the Facebook Live feature. Snapchat has launched “Memories”, a feature that enables users to save photos and videos.

At present, Twitter carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).