Amazon bought Twitch video streaming service for $ 970 million

Since spring of this year, it has been rumored that Google is going to buy the Twitch service for one billion dollars. But now it turned out that Amazon had bypassed a competitor and managed to get the purchase itself. Information officially confirmed by representatives of both parties.



The project Twitch.tv is designed to broadcast gaming video and streaming e-sports tournaments, was launched in 2011. According to the company, the site is visited monthly by 55 million visitors (a daily audience of 7 million) and another one million downloads video. The average time on site for each visitor is about 2 hours per day. The project Twitch.tv in its niche is a real competition for YouTube.

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Buying Amazon once again shows how important computer games are in people's lives. For example, last October, 32 million people watched the broadcast of the League of Legends tournament through various streaming services. This is more than the audience of the final episodes of Breaking Themes, 24 and Sopranos combined!



Twitch.tv is the fourth largest traffic generator among all US sites, it is second only to Netflix, Google and Apple, according to DeepField Inc. statistics. In relative numbers, Twitch generates about 2% of the traffic on the American Internet (during peak hours).



Insiders say that Google really negotiated the purchase of Twitch in May of this year. But the owners of Twitch hired a "star" negotiator Frank Quattrone (Frank Quattrone), who represented the company to all potential buyers and arranged something like an absentee auction. As a result, managed to sell the company at the maximum price.



Google representatives do not comment on the deal. It is believed that the company refused to purchase the service because of the threat of an antitrust investigation . The antimonopoly committee could simply ban this transaction, since YouTube already holds the leading position among video services on the Internet.



Amazon plans with Twitch.tv to strengthen its position in the advertising market. For advertising on Twitch channels, advertisers pay, on average, 85% more than the average market price, overpaying for access to an audience of young, educated gamers.



The deal is not limited to $ 970 million. Amazon promises to pay an additional bonus of more than $ 100 million if Twitch reaches the planned targets.