Seattle based eCommerce Giant, Amazon has reached an agreement to acquire Twitch Interactive, a leading live video platform for gamers, for ~$970MM in cash. This is Amazon’s second biggest acquisition to date (after Zappos) and a major step in its digital content strategy.
What is Known about Amazon Acquisition of Twitch Interactive is as Follows,
Amazon is a destination frequented by many gamers. As a result, it has gathered vast amounts of data on the shopping habits of these gamers. Layering on top of that a leading video platform for live and on-demand gaming content could prove a very powerful combination. We believe that the acquisition of Twitch not only complements nicely with the company’s other digital content (eventually making its Prime offering even more attractive) but also should help grow sales in its video games category as well.
Amazon pipped Google’s YouTube & Why it was Aggressive in its bid ?
Twitch focuses exclusively on live video for gamers. The popularity of gamers talking over game-play is so vast as to warrant its own category on YouTube. While Machinima, which also has an investment from Google / YouTube, is the biggest contender on YouTube (with 11MM subs), it has been the Twitch.tv platform with its focus on live eSports that has grown gangbusters over the last two years – with over 55MM UVs watching more than 15B minutes of video in July.
With its phenomenal growth, the Twitch.tv platform is nipping at the heels of YouTube in this category and quickly becoming the primary destination for users interested in this type of content.Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch disrupts YouTube’s endeavors to better control the distribution of this content (YouTube was also pursuing Twitch). However, on the Advertising side of it, market is still very focused and therefore not as sizeable as one might expect – despite a strong 13-34 male demographic that is hard to find outside of sports.