Twitter recently broached the possibility of introducing a micropayment system for sports fans to watch select clips of sporting events on the platform.
Global head of sports partnerships at Twitter Laura Froelich told SportTechie, ““It’s something that we talk about a lot because Twitter really is the ideal platform for something like that. I can’t necessarily say that it’s something that you’ll see soon, but it’s certainly something that makes all the sense in the world for Twitter.”
According to SportTechie, NBA commissioner Adam Silver first alluded to the project in January on a panel at CES. Said Silver, “I think you’re going to get to the point where somebody wants to watch the last five minutes of the game, and they go click, they’ll pay a set price for five minutes as opposed to what they would pay for two hours of the game.”
Already, the NBA has launched a pay-per-game option, the only North American major league to do so thus far.
Authorizing micropayments to view select sports moments will likely require contract negotiation with the leagues’ broadcast partners.
Future of Twitter: Someone tweets about final 2 minutes of NBA game. Click on link. Pay 50 cents to watch end of game on phone/tablet
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) February 11, 2014
Can't wait until NBA goes to micro payments.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) December 13, 2017
Can't imagine how many people would have bought the last two minutes of Knicks-Lakers tonight for 99 cents.
