More red carpet live streams are coming to Twitter, thanks to a new deal between the social network and Dick Clark Productions, announced this morning. The partners will again work together to bring live streamed programming from award shows exclusively to Twitter, including red carpet pre-shows for the 52nd Academy of Country Music Awards, 2017 Billboard Music Awards and 2017 American Music Awards.
The partnership is now one of several Twitter has forged in recent months in an effort to make its service the home to live events.
Related to this, Twitter also today announced a deal with both Tubefilter and dcp to air the 7th Annual Streamy Awards this fall.
Twitter and dcp had already worked together along with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to bring a live stream from the Golden Globes red carpet show to its network earlier in January. The event did fairly well, bringing in 2.7 million users, who watched the event live on Twitter. In addition, Dick Clark Productions said the Globes were tweeted about 4.7 million times, up from 4.4 million last year.
As with other red carpet events, Twitter’s stream featured hosts who interview the actors and actresses walking into the venue, but it also integrated fan questions, crowdsourced from Twitter users, into those conversations.
“We are thrilled with the success of the Golden Globes red carpet pre-show and look forward to working with Twitter on additional shows,” said Mike Mahan, President, Dick Clark Productions, in a statement about the new deal. “By offering a unique online viewing opportunity, we are able to expand the audience experience and generate deeper, more compelling conversation.”
Both logged-in and logged-out users will be able to watch, as before, and Twitter will sell TV commercial-style ads against the content.
In addition to Dick Clark Productions, Twitter has made deals to stream NFL Thursday Night Football, Trump’s inauguration in partnership with PBS, the conventions in partnership with CBS, Wimbledon, esports, university sports with Pac-12 Networks, NBA programs, financial news via Bloomberg, and more.
These live streams are gaining steam as more people become aware of their existence. For example, its NFL deal to stream Thursday Night Football has been bringing in more viewers, Twitter said this fall, noting that the then three most recent games reached just under 3 million viewers, up 28 percent from the first game’s draw of 2.35 million viewers.
The first of the new live red carpet streams will be the 52nd Academy of Country Music Awards which takes place on April 2nd. That will be followed by the red carpet pre-shows for the Billboard Music Awards on May 21st and the American Music Awards in November.
Image credit: Getty Images/Mark Davis/NBC