Are you ready for some football?
Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) will be live-streaming Thursday Night Football games this fall; not just clips -- entire games.
The surprise news came Tuesday at the conclusion of a bidding war between several digital video heavyweights.
Sources close to the deal confirmed a Bloomberg News report that Twitter will be the NFL's digital partner, joining the league's longtime television partners CBS and NBC.
In January, the Eye and Peacock networks agreed to pay roughly $450 million U.S. combined each year for the next two years of "Thursday Night Football" on TV.
The duration of the Twitter streaming deal is unknown. Representatives of the two companies declined comment ahead of the official announcement about the deal.
Last week Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), which had publicly expressed interest in the rights to the streaming package, dropped out of the race.
Twitter opened Tuesday trading up 56 cents, or 3.3%, at $17.66 U.S., within a 52-week trading range of $13.91 to $53.49 U.S.
