Twitter's jump into live events has largely been about sports. But Sunday night's Grammy Awards attracted more viewers than any NFL game.
Some 5.1 million people tuned into the Grammys live preshow, a number topped only by the presidential election and Donald Trump's inauguration, said Anthony Noto, Twitter's chief financial officer, at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Wednesday.
Noto said that Twitter plans to double the amount of live programming it shows in 2017, as it attempts to boost engagement in an increasingly competitive online media world. In sports. that includes rugby games in France and soccer in the U.K. Twitter even streamed its first ever lacrosse game last weekend and attracted 500,000 viewers, Noto said.
Of the surprising lacrosse performance, Noto said, "We're trying to build awareness of these underserved pieces of content."
International expansion is planned for Japan, the U.K. and elsewhere, he said.
— Update: The story has been updated to reflect that 5.1 million watched the Grammys live preshow, not the event itself, on Twitter.