After Twitter offered live video streams from Wimbledon this week, the social media platform is approaching sports leagues and networks in an effort to acquire digital streaming rights or create partnerships around live sports and entertainment events.

RELATED: Twitter Enters World of High-Def TV with Wimbledon Livestream

According to Recode, Twitter is talking to the NBA, Major League Soccer and cable network Turner, which owns rights to such events as the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and some NBA games and has its own eSports league.

Representatives from all of those organizations declined to comment. In April, however, Twitter CFO Anthony Noto told Recode that the company was talking to the leagues and to the broadcast and cable networks who owned those rights, but declined to name names.

Winning sports rights — even digital ones — is difficult. Most sports rights have been locked up for years, and forward-thinking networks tend to acquire all the rights, including live-streaming and digital rights. Twitter could, however, develop partnerships with existing rights holders to produce programming for its platform. It can also live stream interviews, analysis and other footage from the event.

At Wimbledon, Twitter is streaming around the matches but can’t stream the actual matches because ESPN owns those rights.

A big challenge for Twitter is how it will derive revenue from the content should it acquire rights. Twitter doesn’t currently offer subscriptions — although perhaps it would depending on what deals it can cut — and derives its revenue from ads that run in Twitter feeds. TV networks earn revenue via advertising and subscriptions, with both broadcast and cable networks requiring payments from pay-TV operators in exchange for carriage.

Sports leagues will always work with the highest bidder, and those who make the most money from those rights will always be able to pay the most. Hence, NBC and CBS paying a combined $450 million for one season worth of rights to the NFL’s Thursday night games, while Twitter paid $10 million for its Thursday night NFL rights. Those streams will launch on the social-media platform this fall.

READ MORE: Recode

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