Twitter, Inc. has started testing its live sports streaming service with a feed from tennis tournament Wimbledon.

The test, which originally went unannounced except for a mention on the official Wimbledon Twitter account, sees Twitter providing a stream from ESPN that includes highlights, commentary, and analysis but not actual live games; the stream itself is accompanied by a feed of related tweets in a column below the video, and as users scroll down the page to read the tweets the video remains pinned to the top of the page.

It is not known if the tweets under the live stream are curated or not, but at the time of writing they appear to be very tame suggesting that it may well be the former.

One notable feature is that the stream has its own unique web address, in a similar way to Twitter’s Moments feature, although as Forbes points out the stream rather appropriately has the word “live” in the URL.

Twitter later said in a statement it is “increasingly a place where people can find live streaming video, and that includes exciting sporting events like Wimbledon,” before adding that the live stream as an “extremely early and incomplete test experience” and that it will be “making lots of improvements before we launch it in its final form.”

Live sports

The Wimbledon stream is the first time Twitter has live streamed a sporting event, and follows on from its acquisition of online streaming rights to NFL Thursday Night Football for $10 million in April, a move three months later is still correctly described as being bizarre.

Twitter seems to think that becoming a live sports broadcaster will draw more people to its site, and as a consequence will use the service itself; it’s meant to be an exercise in exposure 101 but as non-registered Twitter users will also be able to see the live stream, it’s at best a gamble and not a cheap one at that.

It’s not clear what the schedule for broadcasts are, but you can test the service out by clicking here.

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