Adidas and Twitter Bring You...High School Football?
Adidas (NASDAQOTH: ADDYY) just announced a new partnership with Twitter (NYSE: TWTR): Friday Night Stripes, a high school football streaming service that'll be available to everyone, logged in or not.
In this segment from MarketFoolery, host Chris Hill and analyst Jason Moser dive into what the deal will entail, how it benefits both companies, and how this partnership takes a page right out of Netflix's (NASDAQ: NFLX) playbook.
A full transcript follows the video.
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This video was recorded on Aug. 20, 2018.
Chris Hill: Adidas is partnering with Twitter to livestream high school football games starting next month. This is in a series they're calling Friday Night Stripes, I'm assuming because they would be sued if they named it Friday Night Lights. I'm curious what you think of this. This seems like a small win for both Adidas and Twitter, with maybe slightly more upside for Adidas.
Jason Moser: Yeah, I think you're probably right there. I like these kinds of deals. I think they're generally win-win for both parties involved. I think Adidas here gets the brand exposure that it's really gunning for, and Twitter gets a chance to demonstrate its utility here for a younger demographic. We talk about these networks, whether it's Twitter or Snapchat or Facebook, you need to demonstrate utility for a wide cross section, right? We're trying to see if Snapchat can perhaps demonstrate that utility for the older audience. Twitter, I think they really kind of have to figure out how to maintain relevance with that younger audience. One way to do that is to keep on throwing content out there that a lot of people like.
I actually like, in their video strategy, a little bit the Netflix's. The reason why I say that is because they tend to want to cast a very wide net and show a bunch of different stuff that is just a little bit of something for a lot of people out there. I'm not going to go watch Middle Atlantic lacrosse, probably, but there are plenty of people that will. High school football, it's interesting to note, this is going to be something that spans the country. It's going to have the top high school teams in the country playing. This is going to be actually pretty compelling content for the football enthusiasts, as well.
The incremental cost for Twitter doing this, modest at best. This is something where they get to really utilize that infrastructure that they've already built and proven out. Gives them the opportunity, probably, to monetize on the advertising side. Adidas gets the brand recognition. I think it's a win-win, easy bet.
Hill: To go back to the Netflix comparison, you have to assume that part of Twitter's thinking here is similar to Netflix's in this regard: "Well, if we can get people to try this, hopefully we can get them to stick around." With Netflix, it's creating buzz-worthy shows -- Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, any of the shows that Netflix has done. Same sort of thing. It's like, "If we can just get people onto our platform for this one show, maybe they'll stick around." In the case of Twitter, they're being smart. This is not just southeast United States' high school football, it's across the country. Same sort of thing. "If we can get people onto Twitter, just to check out this platform, maybe we can get them to stay."
Moser: Yeah, and it's not exclusive to just logged-in users, either. This is going to be logged-in, logged-out users. You're going to be able to get this content regardless. I think there are a number of benefits to that. That really gives you the biggest potential audience you have. Also, not only does it give you a chance to sign up new users, but I think it helps them steer that conversation away from this monthly active user number or even daily active user number.
Really, just showing that wide-reaching network that Twitter has, where people are going to see that content all over the place. You may not be a Twitter user, but if you're watching TV, chances are pretty good you're going to see a lot of Twitter content out there regarding something.
With sports, that's a great vertical for Twitter. We've seen the impact it has when they stream the NFL games and there's a lot of potential there. It's not going to be just one big deal that really knocks it out of the park for these guys. I think it's going to be a lot of these little deals that aid companies on the other end of the transaction looking for that brand exposure, looking to Twitter as a unique and good fit for the content they're trying to get out there.
Chris Hill has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Jason Moser owns shares of Twitter. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends FB, Netflix, and Twitter. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
