Amazon bought Twitch video streaming service for $ 970 million

Since the spring of this year, there have been rumors that Google is going to buy Twitch service for one billion dollars. But now it turned out that Amazon outperformed a competitor and managed to get a purchase for itself. The information is officially confirmed by representatives of both parties.

The Twitch.tv project is intended for broadcasting game video and streaming e-sports tournaments; it was launched in 2011. According to the company, the site is visited monthly by 55 million visitors (daily audience of 7 million) and another million uploads videos. The average time on the site for each visitor is about 2 hours a day. The Twitch.tv project in its niche is a real competitor to YouTube.

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 the series Breaking Bad, 24 and Soprano combined!

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

Insiders sayGoogle really negotiated the purchase of Twitch in May this year. But Twitch owners hired Frank Quattrone, a star negotiator who represented the company to all potential buyers and arranged for a sort of absentee auction. As a result, we 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 due to the threat of antitrust investigation . The antimonopoly committee could simply prohibit this deal, since YouTube already occupies a leading position among video services on the Internet.

Amazon plans to strengthen its position in the advertising market with Twitch.tv. Advertisers pay an average of 85% more than the average market price for advertising on Twitch channels, 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 target.