Twitter to stream live NFL games on Thursdays this season

Twitter and the NFL have signed a deal that will see the social media company stream the Thursday night football game online this season.

Financial terms have not been disclosed, but the deal could be mutually beneficial.

Twitter gets to associate its brand with and offer exclusive content fromthe most popular sports league in the U.S. Meanwhile, the NFL gets to maintain contact with so-called cord cutters who have ditched their cable television subscriptionbut, by and large, are still very open to consuming live sports content in an online streaming format.

• Cable TV price hikes could inspire more cord-cutting

This isn't the first foray into streaming for the NFL. The league signed a deal with Yahoo to stream a game between Jacksonville and Buffalo last October that attracted 15.2 million unique viewers and 33.6 million total views.

That game wasn't on TV, as Yahoo was the only place to watch at the time.

The deal with Twitter won't have the same restrictions, however.U.S. networks CBS and NBC reached a deal with the league in February that will see each network broadcast half of the 16-weekseason's Thursday night games.

Shares in Twitter gained about three per cent in pre-market trading on the Nasdaqearly Tuesday.