Twitter selected by league to live stream Thursday night NFL games

Twitter secured the streaming rights for Thursday Night Football games, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced – naturally --- on the social media site Tuesday morning.

Twitter will stream the 10 games that will be split between NBC and CBS, which secured the Thursday Night Football package for $225 million each. The two-year, $450 million broadcast deal was announced last month. The NFL Network will continue to simulcast all Thursday games and will carry eight exclusively as part of the deal.

"Twitter is where live events unfold and is the right partner for the NFL as we take the latest step in serving fans around the world live NFL football”, said Goodell said in a statement.  “There is a massive amount of NFL-related conversation happening on Twitter during our games and tapping into that audience, in addition to our viewers on broadcast and cable, will ensure Thursday Night Football is seen on an unprecedented number of platforms this season. This agreement also provides additional reach for those brands advertising with our broadcast partners.”

Financial terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed. Bloomberg reported Twitter beat out rival bids by Yahoo, Verizon, Amazon, and Facebook.

The NFL-Twitter partnership also includes pre-game broadcasts on Periscope -- Twitter's live streaming app -- and n-game highlights.

"This is about transforming the fan experience with football," Twitter co-founder and CEO said Jack Dorsey, said in a statement. "People watch NFL games with Twitter today, Now they'll be able to watch right on Twitter Thursday nights."

The league was looking for a way to try and get the cord-cutting crowd and opened the streaming rights to bidding.

The NFL first experimented with global live streaming last season as Yahoo broadcast an October game between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars from London's Wembley Stadium.

Yahoo, which according to published reports paid the NFL $20 million for the rights to that one game, lured 15.2 million viewers to its livestream.