Twitter (TWTR, Financial), the San Francisco-based social networking service, has been awarded the rights to stream Thursday night National Football League games next fall, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced Tuesday.
According to reports, Twitter paid less than $10 million for the 10-game package. Twitter was awarded the rights over several competitors, including Verizon (VZ, Financial), Yahoo! (YHOO, Financial) and Amazon (AMZN, Financial). Facebook (FB, Financial) was another competitor, but it withdrew last week, sources have said.
Thursday night NFL games will be televised by CBS (CBS, Financial), NBC (NBC, Financial) and the NFL Network this fall.
The NFL acknowledged that Twitter wasn’t the highest bidder, and Bloomberg reported that Twitter will be paying a fraction of the apparent market rate for the games. CBS and NBC paid $45 million per game for the rights to broadcast five Thursday night games last season.
CNBC reported Wednesday that the NFL’s decision to form a partnership with Twitter may have been the outcome of arguments between the league and Facebook, the world’s largest social network, over the value of NFL games. CNBC quoted anonymous sources who said league officials believed Facebook undervalued the games. The sources also told CNBC that league officials believe Facebook is not ready for the challenge of streaming NFL games, and Twitter is.
Twitter’s leading shareholder among the gurus is Steven Cohen (Trades, Portfolio) with a stake of 911,093 shares. The stake is 0.13% of Twitter’s outstanding shares and 0.17% of Cohen’s total assets. Cohen acquired the stake in the fourth quarter.
Twitter has a forward P/E of 27, a P/B of 2.8 and a P/S of 5.1. GuruFocus gives Twitter a Financial Strength rating of 6/10 and a Profitability and Growth rating of 3/10.
Twitter sold for $17.17 per share Wednesday afternoon.
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