The WNBA had its first live streamed game on Twitter on Sunday as part of a new three-year deal with the social platform.
The game featuring the Dallas Wings at the Phoenix Mercury received more than 1.1 million unique viewers and an average minute audience (AMA) of 62,459. For comparisons sake, the 10 Thursday Night Football games that live streamed on Twitter during the 2016-17 averaged 3.5 million unique viewers per game.
Twitter uses a standard video view metric which counts a view when a video is 50 percent in view for two seconds.
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For the next three seasons, Twitter will live stream 20 WNBA regular season match-ups, making it the first professional women’s sport to be aired on the platform. The new partnership also includes a hashtag-triggered Twitter emoji when fans Tweet #WNBA or #WNBALive.
Twitter is also currently live streaming National League Lacrosse and Major League Lacrosse games and will have additional sports programming in the near future. At its Digital Content NewFronts presentation earlier this month, the 11-year-old company unveiled a handful of new live streaming initiatives with the PGA TOUR, NFL and The Players’ Tribune, among others.