Twitter is in talks with Apple to bring the Twitter app to Apple TV. The deal would mean Apple TV users could use the Twitter app to stream NFL football games and other live content under Twitter's growing number of video deals. Apple and Twitter declined to comment.
According to the report, Twitter agreed to pay the NFL around USD 10 million to stream 10 games and to sell only a portion of the ad inventory exclusively. Twitter wanted the Thursday night NFL games because of their popularity; each game drew an average of 13 million viewers last season. Facebook had reportedly set tougher terms in the bidding, under which the social network wanted to sell all the ads that would air during the games, two people familiar with the negotiations told the paper.
"Having that live programming every night when sports are playing — with no paywall, no logging in and directly from the source — that’s key to us," said Anthony Noto, the chief financial officer for Twitter and formerly for the NFL, who helped forge the deal.
Noto, a former Goldman Sachs banker with deep ties to the sports media industry, has been put in charge of leading Twitter's efforts in live streaming and has assigned an engineering team to create its streaming video player. Noto said that introducing premium content like sports, politics and entertainment — the types of programming people often pay to see — would help attract and retain more Twitter users.
Source: http://www.telecompaper.com/news/twitter-in-talks-to-add-app-to-apple-tv-report--1157866