On the eve of Friday’s deadline for bids to be submitted to Football Federation Australia, comments from Twitter sports partnerships boss Jonno Simpson yesterday saw the microblogging site emerge as a possible bidder.

“We are part of the discussions, no doubt,” Simpson told media website Mumbrella.

“We want to be part of the discussion because the amount of football or soccer conversation on Twitter is huge in this country and we want to be part of that and we want to deliver the best experience to users.

“This is clearly premium content that we want to deliver.”

Today though, insiders insisted Twitter would not be among Friday’s bidders for the rights, expected to raise around $75-80m a year for the FFA, almost double the last deal signed in 2012.

Current rights holders Fox Sports are understood to be facing possible big money competition from free to air rivals Nine and Seven, with EPL rights holder Optus also tipped to make a bid in conjunction with an FTA broadcaster like SBS.

Twitter this year picked up the rights to livestream 10 Thursday night NFL gridiron games for just US$10 million which was seen by many as the advent of a new era of sport broadcasting online and Twitter’s entry into the highly competitive world of sports rights.

The platform has also done ad revenue share deals with other sporting events like the Melbourne Cup featuring edited highlights and brief interviews, piggybacking on existing broadcast deals with FTA channels.

This is likely to be the model for any A-League package, according to sources close to Twitter.

They hope to seal an agreement with the FFA and whoever wins the broadcast rights deal after a final decision is made, and not pin their colours to one particular bid or another.

The source said: “Twitter are not bidding for TV rights, but they may look to be digital partners. They can provide access to another audience.”