The National Football League said it had chosen Twitter as its exclusive global partner for streaming its Thursday night games during the 2016 regular season.

Twitter Inc (TWTR.N), whose shares were up about 1 percent in early trading, will stream 10 games for free, the NFL said in a statement.

The deal also includes in-game highlights as well as pre-game broadcasts from players and teams on Periscope, Twitter's live-streaming video service.

The terms of the deal were not announced, but technology news website Re/code, citing people familiar with the bidding process, reported that Twitter had paid less than $10 million.

The NFL signed a multiyear partnership with Twitter last year to de

The National Football League has struck a deal with Twitter Inc.(TWTR.N) to stream live Thursday Night Football games online to a global audience this season – but not in Canada.

The NFL is billing the exclusive partnership as a way to bring 10 Thursday night broadcasts during the 2016 season “to a global audience across devices and for free.”

But the live streams won’t be available to Twitter users in Canada, at least for the coming season. Rogers Communications Inc. holds the Canadian rights to broadcast Thursday Night Football on its Sportsnet channels, and with one year left on its current contract with the NFL, Twitter won’t be encroaching on Rogers’s turf.

“I’m told by the NFL that they will not be doing it in Canada,” said Scott Moore, president of Sportsnet for Rogers, in an interview. “It’s in respect to our rights agreement.”

Mr. Moore declined to say whether the contract Rogers has with the NFL specifically precludes Twitter from offering its live-streamed games in Canada, but said the NFL informed Rogers of its partnership with the social network on Tuesday.

In an e-mail, a spokesperson for Twitter Canada confirmed that the games won’t be viewable on its platform in Canada, but declined to comment further.

A spokesperson for the NFL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The games streamed on Twitter will provide free access to the same 10 contests appearing on CBS and NBC, through an existing pact. The NFL Network will also simulcast the game to its TV subscribers. CBS and NBC reportedly paid a combined $450-million per year for the TV rights to those games.

The terms of the Twitter deal were not disclosed, though technology news site Re/code cited sources familiar with the bidding process as saying the social networking company paid the NFL less than $10-million in total for its one-year experiment.

Twitter will also produce in-game highlights and broadcast pre-game content through Periscope, its live streaming video service.

The NFL’s pact with Twitter is a one-year deal, but could impact future negotiations for broadcast rights as it opens the hugely popular football contests to an online audience. Until last season, traditional TV had held a monopoly on live NFL game broadcasting. But the league broke with tradition when it partnered with Yahoo to live stream a game between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars held in London, England last October.

nership with Twitter, included in-game highlights from pre-season through Super Bowl 50.

Anthony Noto, Twitter's current chief financial officer, also held the same position at the NFL between 2008 and 2010.

Up to Monday's close of $17.09, Twitter's shares had fallen 26 percent this year. The company's shares hit an all-time low in February after the company said its user growth stalled for the first time since it went public in 2013.

Facebook, Yahoo, Verizon and Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Twitter did not provide further details on the deal.

The NFL said in February it would split the broadcast rights for its Thursday night games between CBS Corp and NBC, a unit of Comcast Corp.

The NFL will get a total of about $450 million from CBS and NBC for the rights to broadcast 10 games in 2016 and 2017, the Wall Street Journal had reported in February.