New York
When the league negotiated its latest deal for the Thursday package, it decided to sell the streaming rights separately for an “over the top” broadcast. This past season, it partnered with Yahoo to stream a game from London that took place on a Sunday morning in the United States.
Only the 10 Thursday night games on CBS and NBC will be streamed through Twitter under a one-year agreement, the NFL announced Tuesday. They will be free worldwide on all devices through the Twitter platform. Viewers will not need to be registered Twitter users.
The NFL Network-only Thursday games are not part of the deal.
The league wants to experiment with digital broadcasts to see how they might fit into future strategies. In the meantime, this also offers a new revenue source with digital companies eager to get involved in live sports.
Twitter is paying more than $10 million along with providing promotional opportunities as part of the deal, according to a person familiar with the agreement. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the companies are not releasing the financial details.
CBS and NBC are paying $45 million per game for the Thursday night package.
So far, the audience for NFL streams has been significantly smaller than that for traditional television. The Yahoo broadcast of the Bills-Jaguars game from London in October averaged a worldwide audience of about 2.4 million. A Jets-Dolphins matchup from London earlier that month, which started at the same time, averaged more than quadruple that in the U.S. alone with 9.9 million viewers on CBS.
New York
Engles returned to Columbia after spending eight years as the head coach of NJIT. Over the past six seasons at the school he went 100-88, including consecutive 20-win seasons. Prior to leading the Highlanders, he was an assistant at Columbia from 2003-08.
He replaced Kyle Smith, who took the head coaching job at San Francisco last week. Engles inherits a squad that is coming off one of the best seasons in school history.
The Lions won 25 games and capped off the season with the CollegeInsiders.com Tournament title. They became the first New York City school to win a postseason title since St. John’s won the NIT in 2003.
Houston
Villanova’s last-second win over North Carolina on Monday night averaged a 10.6 rating across TBS, TNT and truTV in the first title game to air on cable. The 17.8 million viewers are down 37 percent from the 28.3 million for last season’s Duke-Wisconsin matchup on CBS, which drew the largest audience in 18 years. Viewership is down 16 percent from the 21.3 million for UConn-Kentucky in 2014.
The previous low was a 10.8 for North Carolina-Michigan State in 2009.
Viewership was down throughout the tournament, which was lacking the star power of the 2015 edition, not to mention the allure of Kentucky’s pursuit of an undefeated season. The two routs in Saturday’s semifinals also didn’t help.
Munich
In the night’s other quarterfinal, Luis Suarez scored twice to lead Barcelona to a 2-1 comeback victory over 10-man Atletico Madrid.
Portland, Ore.
Wambach, who won a World Cup with the U.S. national team last summer, was arraigned on Tuesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court. She was not present, but her attorney entered a plea of not guilty on her behalf.
Wambach was scheduled to speak Tuesday night at the University of Kentucky.
She was arrested on Saturday night after running a red light in Portland, Ore., where she lives, and charged with Driving Under the Influence of Intoxicants (DUII) — Alcohol.
Wambach, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who announced her retirement from the national team in December, posted an apology on her Facebook page Sunday and took responsibility for her actions.