Thursday Night Football is returning to Twitch this year, and they’re bringing in your favorite streamers to co-host the games.
Starting with the season’s fourth week of play featuring the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers, football fans can watch the games live and in full on Twitch. Twitch has also set up a number of popular streamers to co-stream the games in addition to enabling fans to watch the broadcast on Twitch’s own Prime Video channel.
Although the first three weeks of games are only viewable on the NFL Network, from week four through the end of the season the Thursday night games will be free to view for everyone online. Twitch has brought on some popular streamers to cast the games as well. Notable names include Jose “AngryJoe” Vargas, Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar, Nick ‘NICKMERCS’ Kolcheff, and Eric ‘Problemwright’ Wright, among others.
Twitch streams to broadcast NFL games
Each of the streamers has some kind of interest in the NFL. For example, Problemwright is a well-known Madden streamer who is deep in the Madden community and one of the best players in the game. AngryJoe has reviewed most Madden games in the past in his videos and will now be streaming every Thursday night game this season.
The games begin streaming on September 26, though it’s still unclear if there will be special emotes like in years past. Last year there were several football-themed emojis that fans could use while they watched the games.
Allowing Twitch users to stream the games creates a new way of distributing content for the NFL. Viewers can talk amongst each other, comment on the game, share their opinions, and create a sense of community in these streams. It also gives football fans who might not have access to the required cable channels or broadcast stations to be able to watch the games for free and at their leisure.
Last year, Twitch also had an extension that allowed fans to access real-time stats through the streaming platform. Fans could also make predictions and had a leaderboard through which top performers in predictions could be displayed.
This partnership is a result of an agreement between Amazon and Fox which allows Amazon to stream the games alongside Fox’s over-the-air broadcast.
