Twitter has been picking up live-streaming deals left and right these days, including most recently for rugby matches, and before that with Dick Clark Productions. Today, the company announced another high-profile grab: Showtime. But before you get too excited, the deal is just for a Saturday-night boxing match from Showtime Sports.
This is the first time that Showtime has brought live boxing to Twitter, the network notes in an announcement.
On Saturday, February 18th, Showtime will live stream its Championship Boxing tripleheader headlined by the four-division world champ Adrien Broner versus Adrian Granados in a 10-round welterweight bout. Other matches will include WBA Welterweight Champion David Avanesyan versus Lamont Peterson and Marcus Browne up against Thomas Williams.
The event, like Twitter’s other live-streaming deals, will be made available to both logged-in and logged-out users alike. In the latter case, visitors can go to the dedicated URL showtimeboxing.twitter.com or @ShowtimeBoxing to tune in to watch the match and participate in the conversation.
The match will also be promoted in the Explore tab in Twitter’s app. Explore took over the spot that Moments once held in a recent app update. The section is designed to better feature the live events Twitter now regularly hosts, as it offers an area at the top of the screen where the event can be showcased.
As for Showtime, the network is using Twitter as a means of promoting its premium channel and its sports offerings. The live stream is serving as an extension of the Showtime free preview weekend underway now, where the channel is made available to more than 73 million TV households across the U.S. from today through Sunday.
“We are in the midst of an unrivaled run of seven live boxing events over an eight-week span on Showtime and CBS,” said Stephen Espinoza, executive vice president & general manager, Showtime Sports, in a statement. “With this unprecedented live stream on Twitter, we have the opportunity to reach boxing fans and casual observers everywhere with the industry-leading boxing programming we deliver to our subscribers on a consistent basis.”
The match is more of a one-off deal for Twitter, as it’s only for a single event, not some larger agreement between Showtime and Twitter for future events. However, the company has brought a number of live streams to its service as of late, including red carpet events, NFL games, Trump’s inauguration, NBA matches, Wimbledon, e-sports competitions and more.