Legit question: if every game can't be broadcasted on the flagship CBS station, what does the league gain by showing games on Twitch, instead of all access?

I think twitch was the solution for internationals since we cannot watch on cbs or cbs all access. Don’t know if they are trying this out for the local US market to see if it’s something that can work. Honestly, during the Challenge Cup the chat was great, you could see messages in German, French, Portuguese, Spanish and English, we did have the odd troll but overall it was fun. I was not on the chat this morning so probably new influx of US “fans” who just want to troll, but they get tired eventually if no one engages with them or reports them.

Twitch has a deal to be a broadcaster afaik, so probably part of it is simply a way to show that Twitch isn't only a streaming platform for video games.

In my view Twitch is better than All Access because it's free, and because their app works better. It also puts it in front of a completely different demographic. I agree twitch chat can be terrible, although it depends heavily on the channel. I had chat closed during today's game but it sounds like they need invest more in moderators and maybe tweak some settings (aggressive automod, followers-only chat, that kind of thing).

Warning: I may do some speculating below.

Twitch was purchased by Amazon for $970 Million in cash back in 2014. Primarily an eSports platform, Amazon has tried to leverage the platform into the Live Sport market and the NWSL is one of the many deals they have made recently to really make a push in that direction. Twitch is in the 'buy all the content' mode, similar to ESPN when they got started, and they have Amazon money behind them. When the CBS deal was announced, the inclusion of Twitch was a bit of a surprise, and they were included as the exclusive international broadcast partner. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed so it's hard to know how much any of the broadcast partners paid. Listening to different interviews with Lisa Baird (and reading between the lines) it seems like the NWSL took less money than they could have to get the exposure that CBS could bring.

When the Fall series was announced, it was also announced that the NWSL expanded their deal with Twitch to now include some domestic matches. Again, we don't know how much the now expanded deal is worth. As you pointed out originally, we know how CBS recoups their investment, they sell ads or subscriptions to ther All-Access platform. It's less clear how Twitch recoups their investment, although they do sell ads, but in a more general, non-traditional way, and also rely on subscriptions and purchases by their user base. What their break-even point is, or even how much they may be willing to lose on their investment for some bigger long-term goals, we will probably never know.

So as a consumer of NWSL content on Twitch, it appears like the best way to support the 'channel' is by subscribing, which looks to cost $4.99/month in perpetuity. I am under no obligation to do this, but it would show the commitment of the fan base. CBS All-Access charges a similar amount but forces the payment to get the content. As a supporter of the NWSL, I'm willing to pay for both if it helps signal to the powers that pay that there is value in continuing to invest in the NWSL.

Today was my first foray into viewing the NWSL on the Twitch platform after using CBS All-Access for the Challenge Cup. Again, at this point I've paid no money to Twitch, but I have 'Followed' the NWSL Official channel and I'm poking around the platform to try and figure out how everything works. I am still struggling to figure it all out. I don't know what 'bits' or 'cheers' or 'hype trains' are, and I can't even figure out how to pay for a Subscription. I do, however, have a desire to give money to Twitch to show that they have made a good decision in investing in the NWSL. As 12:00 approaches I figure I'll wait until after the game to figure these things out.

So 12:00 comes and nothing happens. The icon for the NWSL Channel is still dark. Eventually it does 'go live', but only as a co-stream of the NWSL Official2 channel, which is the International feed, which I'm geo-locked out of. Technical difficulties, these things happen, but it is airing for the International market. It eventually gets worked and we get the game about 10 minutes after it started.

So now I'm trying to follow the chat function, thinking it's a similar community to what we experience on Reddit. There are several thousand people following with around 20-30 lines of 'chat' quickly scrolling by. It becomes readily apparent that not everyone is there to support the NWSL and that the user base is somewhat toxic towards the game and women in general. Eventually it's figured out how to get rid of 'chat' and just view the game. This helps but does nothing to want me to help contribute to the Twitch platform.

The game stream itself isn't great either, with a continuously glitching picture. Ten years ago this was excusable as the broadcast world was still transitioning to digital media and streaming. Twitch is, at its core, a streaming platform and in 2020 this should not be happening. A dude recording himself on his laptop making donuts should not provide a cleaner broadcast than a professional media company with a full REMI workflow.

If the NWSL is in a true partnership with CBS and Twitch, then Lisa Baird needs to express that the experience on Twitch is unacceptable and they need to do better. We as fans shouldn't have to accept that Twitch is better than nothing when we are paying for the experience on CBS All-Access. In my opinion, Twitch has to improve or the NWSL needs to move it all onto CBS. Quite frankly, 'free' is too much to pay for the Twitch experience.

I didn't watch the game live yesterday, and when I was watching the saved recording there WERE several ads.

Also, I think one huge advantage to having the games on Twitch is getting more viewers. I started watching WoSo after the World Cup last year, and the only reason I now regularly watch the NWSL is because every game was free to watch on the Yahoo app. My original plan was just to tune in to 2-3 games just to see my faves from the USWNT play some more soccer, but eventually, because every game was easily accessible, I ended up watching the whole season.

If it hadn't been free last year, there's no way I would be paying to watch the league this year, because I'm not going to pay to see a sports league I wasn't already invested in before. With it being 1yr since the 2019 World Cup, my interest/hype would have faded too much for me to watch games in any way other than free.

Unfortunately, CBS All Access is not a service like Netflix where many homes are already paying for it, so they're less likely to get a lot of new viewers from people who just happen to stumble upon an NWSL match that's happening.

Hopefully the league continues to gain viewers, but for now, I think having free ways to watch it is necessary. Personally, when I get really into something (usually a TV show), I start following people on social media who tweet/post about that thing regularly, but will sometimes see people I already followed before post about that thing as well. When it comes to the NWSL, ever since I started watching over a year ago, NO ONE i was already following before has ever tweeted about the NWSL as well. I would say that unfortunately, the league still needs needs a good amount of viewers before putting games behind a paywall on a service that offers nowhere near the amount of content that service like Netflix does.

It’s really strange, I didn’t want to make a judgement so soon, but the Twitch streams now are completely different to what they were during the Challenge Cup.

Then, it was actually enjoyable to log on and talk with people - now it’s just a mess 🤷‍♀️

I think having US/CAN games on too means they need a bigger mod team on Twitch. Previously they got away with only one mod, but I don’t think that’s the case any longer..

Its a numbers game. The NWSL has yet to prove to advertisers and sponsors there is a direct ROI by supporting the league. The sponsors to date are for the most part large companies (Budweiser, Google, P&G, etc.) that are throwing chump change at the league for the goodwill of supporting women athletes, but these deals are not enough to make the league financially viable.

Advertisers and sponsors look at "eyeballs." The more eyeballs, the more advertiser money. The first thing the NWSL should have done years ago is live-stream every single game for free. Capture as many eyeballs as it can. It didn't, so now it looks like it is starting to figure it out. Twitch is an official sponsor and gives it a platform to livestream and capture eyeball data.