Twitter signs ad and live content deal with Disney’s ESPN

Twitter (TWTR) shares witnessed some strong upward movement after the company announced a deal with Disney’s (DIS) ESPN. The stock was up 4.5% on Monday. Jack Dorsey’s company entered into more than 30 deals with publishers and creators that include top players like Comcast’s (CMCSA) subsidiary NBCUniversal, Viacom (VIA) and Walt Disney Co. This is basically to bulk up the video offering on its microblogging site.

To strengthen its foothold in video, the social media giant is adding new brands to its growing list of partnership. Its latest partnership with Disney’s ESPN would bring live sports, news and entertainment programming on the microblogging platform. At the same time, the deal creates advertising opportunity for Disney.

Two years back it was disclosed that Twitter would share 70 percent of the ad revenue with the creator who publishes the videos. This was part of the company’s Amplify program and also a strategy to fight competition from YouTube and Facebook (FB). At Facebook, the revenue share split is said to be close to 50%.

Under the new deal, the new videos that Twitter will have are NBCUniversal’s live videos, live sports programming from Disney’s ABC to ESPN to Disney channel, show formats from Viacom like MTV News and BET Breaks. Twitter also renewed certain partnerships, for instance, Buzzfeed.

Video advertisements account for more than half of the revenues Twitter generates from ads. The company never gives out the total revenue it generates from videos. However, Twitter’s ad revenue during the recently ended first quarter was $575 million. In the past, Twitter spent a couple of years trying to develop its video advertising infrastructure and it had signed agreements with several high profile brands.