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Twitter Tackles Facebook, Google, Yahoo To Win NFL Streaming Rights

Twitter ( TWTR ) made an end run around Facebook ( FB ), Amazon.com ( AMZN ), Alphabet ( GOOGL ) subsidiary Google, Verizon Communications ( VZ ) and Yahoo ( YHOO ) to capture digital rights to the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, a deal Twitter announced early Tuesday. Now the real work begins, says Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. analyst James Cakmak. While “winning the deal is one thing, executing to optimize the product experience is another,” Cakmak wrote in an industry note. The NFL has streamed selected games in the past, but this is its first season-long streaming deal. It’s also a high-profile foray into live programming for Twitter. Given Twitter’s focus around live events and Twitter CFO Anthony Noto’s prior position as the NFL’s CFO, “We see this as an opportunity to leverage the Periscope acquisition and achieve success around live programming and promotion of the conversation around it,” Cakmak wrote. He added that “the $10 million price tag paid by Twitter is less than anticipated, considering Yahoo paid $20 million for a single game last season, which averaged slightly over 2 million viewers per minute. But at this price, we see this as the perfect option for Twitter, with very limited downside.” ‘Bold Moves’ Required By Twitter Stifel analyst Scott Devitt called Twitter’s latest hunt for new users “an aggressive and potentially expensive move by Twitter to reinvigorate user growth and engagement, but bold moves are required to turn the business, so we will wait to fully pass judgment.” The deal poses “no risk” for the NFL, since “it gets its check while continuing to broadcast on network TV and can go back to market in two years, offering streaming rights to the highest bidder, just like it is doing here on the heels of the one-off deal with Yahoo last year,” Devitt said in research note. Last season, Yahoo paid $17 million to stream a game from London and also broadcast on network TV in the teams’ home markets, according to Bloomberg. On U.S. television, NFL commands the highest per-game price for any sport, Bloomberg said. In the most recent broadcast deal, CBS ( CBS ) and Comcast ’s ( CMCSA ) NBC each paid about $45 million a game for five Thursday night contests for the 2016 and 2017 seasons, according to Bloomberg. Under the new deal, Twitter will live-stream the football games to the public for free at the same time they are being shown on NBC, CBS and the NFL Network, the NFL said in a statement. “This is about transforming the fan experience with football. People watch NFL games with Twitter today. Now they’ll be able to watch right on Twitter Thursday nights,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in the statement. Reports quoted Devitt as saying the digital rights Twitter attained also include the Sunday morning U.K. International Series, which in 2016 will pit the Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Indianapolis Colts in Week 4, the Los Angeles Rams vs. New York Giants in Week 7, and the Cincinnati Bengals vs. Washington Redskins in Week 8. Twitter stock rose last week on reports that MasterCard would be interested in working with social media services Twitter and Facebook to build up their payment services. Twitter stock was down a fraction in midday trading in the stock market today , near 17. Yahoo stock was down 2% midday Tuesday, and Alphabet stock was down almost 1%. Facebook stock was up a fraction. Twitter reported that user growth slowed for the fourth consecutive quarter in Q4 and guided its Q1 revenue below consensus estimates, raising concerns that usage may be peaking and prompting buyout rumors. Average monthly active users rose 9% year over year in Q4 to 320 million. Wall Street had expected 323 million. Growth has cooled from 18% in Q1, to 15% in Q2 and 11% in Q3. For 2016, eMarketer expects Twitter to generate $2.61 billion in worldwide ad revenue, down 11% from eMarketer’s earlier prediction of $2.95 billion.

Why You Should Closely Watch Apple’s Stock Chart

Loading the player… Apple ( AAPL ) shares tried to make a pivotal move in the stock market today with the recapturing of a key technical level. Credit Suisse raised its price target on Apple from 140 to 150, saying that gross profit from Apple services — including Apple Pay, Apple Music and iCloud — has big growth potential. Meanwhile, Brean Capital cut its price target from 170 to 155. The analyst said that the Street’s iPhone unit shipment expectations for the March and June quarters may be too optimistic. Shares jumped as much as 1.9% in heavy volume Monday morning, breaking past resistance at the 110 price level and retaking the critical 200-day moving average in intraday trade. Apple hasn’t traded above the 200-day since five months ago, and even then it stayed above the line only briefly. Shares pared their gains to close up 1% at 111.12, pennies below their 200-day line at 111.32. If the stock can close above the 200-day line, it would be bullish. The stock has suffered severe technical damage over the last year, but it’s up more than 20% from its January low. Apple is now 16% below its all-time high of 134.54, reached at the end of last April. Among other widely held tech stocks, Microsoft ( MSFT ) is trading about 2% below its late December high and a consolidation base buy point of 56.95. Microsoft shares were down 0.5% in intraday trade. Facebook ( FB ) fell 3% in big volume on a cautious report from Deutsche Bank. Facebook is now trading about 4% below its February high and a buy point at 117.69. Google owner Alphabet ( GOOGL ) is trading 6% below a cup-base buy point of 810.45. Alphabet lost 0.6% Monday. And Netflix ( NFLX ) is hitting resistance at its 200-day line for a second session. The stock is 21% below its December peak. Netflix shares fell 1.3% Monday.

New Amazon Payments Unit Ups Ante Vs. Rivals PayPal, Square

Mighty e-commerce firm Amazon.com ( AMZN ) is launching its payments service on several platforms that cater to small and midsize businesses, the company said Monday. Called the Global Partner Program , the new business will allow firms that build e-tail storefronts on the platforms Amazon is partnering with to integrate the “Pay With Amazon” feature. Pay With Amazon aims to reduce any friction when checking out online. By logging in with Amazon, shoppers don’t have to enter a 16-digit credit card number and other billing details. Rival payments firms such as  PayPal ( PYPL ) have been working on reducing friction at checkout for years. Partners in Amazon’s Global Partner Program include Japan-based FutureShop, France-based PrestaShop and Canada-based  Shopify ( SHOP ). Amazon stock fell nearly 1%, to 593.19, on the stock market today . The company has an IBD Composite Rating of 77, where 99 is the highest. Amazon stock is forming a cup base, with a buy point of 696.54, after touching a seven-month low of 474 in early February. The new payments program “could help Amazon reach a much larger audience of merchants,” Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird, told IBD via email. “However, I believe there are still channel conflicts that may exist with allowing Amazon to see transaction data. In fact, Shopify and others already have relationships with payment platforms such as PayPal and Stripe. As such, it may still be an uphill battle for Amazon payments to gain a lot more traction with merchants. “That said, Amazon does have a lot of customers who may wish to use Amazon payments, and the plus side for merchants would be higher transaction volumes.” Wedbush analyst Gil Luria says Amazon has struggled for years to make headway in the payments business against firms such as PayPal. Apple ( AAPL ) and Google, a unit of Alphabet ( GOOGL ), also have entered the payments sector with digital wallet technologies that revolve around use of cellphones for payments transactions. The Amazon announcement is hot on the heels of similar moves by PayPal and  Square ( SQ ). On Wednesday,  Square said it planned to add Web checkout capabilities to its payment processing product — a direct challenge to much larger competitor PayPal, which has more than 13 million merchants vs. Square’s 2 million. Also Wednesday, PayPal’s Braintree unit — which boasts that it processes payments for startups such as Airbnb, Jet.com and Uber — announced that it was partnering with several all-in-one e-commerce platforms, such as BigCommerce.