Twitter to broadcast Premier League football during 2016/17 season

Twitter is to broadcast goals and highlights from Premier League football matches during the 2016/17 season, having signed a deal with Sky Sports.

Users of the social network in the UK and Ireland will be able to see highlight clips of goals and other key moments shown in games broadcast live by Sky Sports. The clips will appear on the SkyFootball Twitter account immediately after they have been broadcast, and can be viewed by Twitter users who are not Sky subscribers.

The deal comes after a similar arrangement saw Twitter broadcast highlights during Euro 2016 and gave behind-the-scenes coverage of the Wimbledon tennis championships via live streaming service Periscope.

Twitter revealed the partnership just hours after it reported its slowest-ever revenue growth since going public in 2013. The disappointing financial results saw shares in Twitter drop 11% as it fell short of Wall Street estimates and its user base increased just 1% in 12 months. Twitter generated $602m (£460m) in revenue, but made a $107m loss in the quarter.

"We can't think of a better way to continue the momentous summer of sport on Twitter than live Premier League video clips," said Theo Luke, head of Twitter Amplify. "Sky Sports are incredibly innovative on Twitter so it seemed like a natural fit to work with them to bring fans the most sought after action in sport, in an instant."

Twitter and Sky Sports users in Ireland will also get access to highlights from matches played at 3pm on a Saturday, footage of which is not usually shown on television to protect ticket sales.

David Gibbs, digital director of Sky Sports and Sky News, said: "We're delighted to be working with Twitter to bring in-game clips to football fans across the UK and Ireland".

In April 2016, Twitter announced it would live stream NFL Thursday night American football matches worldwide, for free. It is understood Twitter beat out competition from the likes of Amazon, Verizon, Yahoo and Facebook in the bidding process with a rumoured price of around $10m (£7m, €8m) for all 10 games.