re:Think Games — May 21, 20 Esports Industry Observations
I have spent a lot of time talking about the games and history of the industry. Because esports is not one game, it can be hard to wrap your head around. Today however my thoughts have turned to Twitch. Twitch, or twitch.tv as the website is called, is probably the premier live game streaming platform in North America. I say North America because Twitch was banned in China (joining a list of distinguished American websites) in 2018.
The roots of Twitch go back to 2005[1] when Justin Kan created justin.tv and became part of the wave of people trying to “lifestream” — broadcast their lives around the clock. The audiences were not so much into his show but wanted to know how to create their own video streams. Demand for streaming video games was exploding and one of the first employees was a game streamer that showed other people how to set up their streams.
Amazon acquired Twitch in 2014 for 1.4B in revenue with 100,000 a year. As of March 2020[2] 3.84M people broadcast programming on Twitch. In fact, you may know a broadcaster and not know it. A neighbor, who coached with me in little league, recently shared that his son was earning north of $60,000 a year streaming on twitch.
Full disclosure, my own company Bravous, broadcasts daily on twitch.tv/bravousesports. We recently became a twitch “Affiliate” (the lowest level of broadcaster capable of earning money from a stream) and we are working on becoming a Partner — the next tier up. I can tell you first hand building an audience is not simple.
Out of the 3.8+ Million streamers, only 41K are Twitch “Partners” — just a smidge over 1%. Today Twitch software is built into both the Xbox and the PlayStation, and on Windows, virtually every game supports, “Going Live”.
In their recent redesign of Facebook, they elevated video game streaming to the top level of their application bar.
Streaming games is hot, and from a business perspective, it is worth paying attention to because this in many ways represents the future of media. Creating programming that not only entertains and audience but engages them is the new high ground for holding people’s attention.
While Twitch may seem to be all about video game entertainment, it is worth noting that Critical Role — the live play Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Program run by professional voice actors is among the highest subscribed show on the platform with 499K subscribers and more than 13M views.
My own personal experience with Twitch started a bit standoffish. I didn’t get it, and I don’t like feeling stupid. That was why one day I told me team, “Start a stream. I don’t care what you do. Just start doing it. We need to figure this out. How do we build an audience?” That’s when we launch, “Melee Mondays”, Smash Ultimate Wednesdays, and Squid School. Each show reflected who we were and what we do. We are professional gamers who love to play games and help other people get better at playing them too. Well, that’s a part of what we do. But Twitch allowed us to showcase that in ways no other platform could, and we could interact with the audiences that tuned in.
In so many ways, Twitch is to professional video gaming what broadcast television is to professional sports. And in a similar fashion, it is this symbiotic relationship that pushes both platforms forward. Where large sporting events pushed forward High Definition, and later Ultra-high-definition broadcast cameras, video game events are pushing the capabilities and boundaries of Twitch. What has been slow to materialize, are companies that are leveraging this technology outside of video games.
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[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-video-game-streaming-site-twitch-2014-10