Twitter and the NFL Team Up to Stream Thursday Night Football

— -- Are you ready for some football...on Twitter?

Twitter has won the digital streaming rights for Thursday night NFL football games. The news was appropriately announced on Twitter by Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League.

"This is about transforming the fan experience with football. People watch NFL games with Twitter today," Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey said in a statement. "Now they'll be able to watch right on Twitter Thursday nights."

The games will be free this fall to the over 800 million registered and non-registered users worldwide on Twitter and will be available on mobile devices, tablets, PCs and connected TVs, according to a release from the NFL. It was not immediately known how much Twitter paid for the digital streaming rights. The ten games that will be streamed on Twitter will also be shown on broadcast television.

The NFL had shopped the digital rights to a number of companies, including Facebook, Amazon and Verizon, according to ESPN.

Last October the NFL partnered with Yahoo to live stream the Buffalo Bills vs. the Jacksonville Jaguars at London's Wembley Stadium -- the first time users could access NFL content for free and regardless of their location.

Growing its number of monthly active users has been a challenge for Twitter. During the company's last quarterly earnings call with investors in February, Twitter reported 320 million monthly active users in the fourth quarter -- the same number the company reported in the prior quarter. The number of daily active users also remained unchanged, according to the company.

While Twitter has tremendous reach, it has lagged in attracting and retaining new users, who in turn entice businesses to advertise on Twitter and drive company revenue.

Twitter reported having 130,000 active advertisers in the fourth quarter -- up 90 percent from the same quarter one year ago, as well as a 153 percent increase in user engagements with advertisements.