Twitter made a big splash in the sports rights marketplace by landing the NFL Thursday Night Football package in 2016. The social media giant followed up with live broadcasts of MLB, NHL, MLS, WNBA, and NASCAR, among others.
But, unlike Facebook with MLB or Amazon with English Premier League in the U.K., Twitter hasn’t sought exclusive broadcasts and has slowed its acquisition of competition rights. This has been by design, Twitter VP and global head of content partnerships Kay Madati told the Australian Financial Review late last week.
Madati called Twitter a “friend, not foe,” of media companies, and said that its aim was “not to compete with rights holders.