Ninja To Live Commentate Thursday Night Football Tonight on Twitch

Twitch is continuing to think outside the box in its live-streaming of Thursday Night Football, adding Tyler “Ninja” Blevins to the cast of top Twitch personalities who will be co-streaming for its last game of the season tonight. Twitch’s live TNF experience features interactive Extensions like the the ability to virtually Cheer for charity, fan commentary with co-streaming, and special emotes. 

Ninja will be co-streaming on Twitch tonight for the last game of the Thursday Night Football season tonight.

With a record-setting 12+ million followers on Twitch, Ninja is often cited as the most popular gamer in the world and has been joined on his Twitch channel by athletes, musicians, and celebrities, such as Drake and Ellen, while being the first competitive gamer to grace the cover of ESPN the Magazine (Sep 2018).

“Playing video games is just one of my passions. I’m also a lifelong NFL fan, which runs in my family,” said Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. “It’s cool to be able to co-stream and commentate a Thursday Night Football game for my Twitch community and connect with them over other interests like this.”

Co-Streaming allows streamers to add original live commentary to broadcasts as they stream it to their own communities, resulting in a fan-as-commentator experience. Top Twitch personalities  Ninja, Jericho, TimTheTatman, and GoldGlove will all also be co-streaming the game this week.

Twitch is live-streaming 11 TNF games to its global audience at www.twitch.tv/primevideo. The games are free to watch on Twitch’s web and mobile apps. In addition to Twitch,Thursday Night Football is available on FOX, NFL Network, and Prime Video on Thursdays at 8:20pm ET.

Twitch’s Extensions  bring interactive functionality to online viewers in the form of a computer screen overlay that can be interacted with just by pointing-and-clicking on it. With the TNF LIVE Extension, viewers can access all of a team’s stats in real time, such as NFL standings and Team Stat Pages. In addition, viewers can make game and quarter play calls, such as how drives will end and who will win, with a leaderboard tracking how well they know their stuff.

The live viewers in Twitch chat have access to an array of NFL “emotes,” which are the emojis native to Twitch. These emotes include every team logo and some original emotes Twitch created to celebrate touchdowns, flags, catching and running with the ball, and more.

Throughout the season, Twitch will donate $1 per 100 Bits Cheered to United Way during the TNF broadcast on twitch.tv/primevideo. Bits are a virtual good used in Twitch chat that provide viewers with a way to virtually Cheer and support their favorite broadcasts. Bits can be purchased directly from the chat window and appear in chat in the form of gem-shaped animated emotes. The more Bits used, the bigger and more animated the emotes get, illustrating the support of the fans.