Last Wednesday night, between 1a-5a EST, Drake (rapper), JuJu Smith-Schuster (Steelers WR), Travis Scott (rapper) and Ninja (a pro gamer) set an all-time, non-tournament, record for concurrent viewers on a single individual’s Twitch channel (628,000, previous record 388,000) as they streamed themselves playing Fortnite; a popular online survival game with 45 million players. Curious viewers followed along (many chiming in with funny one-liners) as the foursome navigated last-man-standing, 100-man, “Battle Royales”. Despite the late start, the virtual collaboration garnered mainstream attention (see: Chrissy Teigen’s tweet); the significance of which was not lost on Twitch SVP of Marketing Kate Jhaveri who called it “a cultural moment in terms of building awareness around the appeal of social video.”
Howie Long-Short: Fortnite was developed by Epic Games, a privately held company that Tencent (TCEHY) maintains a 40% stake in. TCEHY reported in November that YTD profits were up 69%, with mobile and PC gaming driving the revenue growth; but, those figures don’t account for the recent success of Fortnite. We’ll need to wait for Q4 ’17 and Q1 ’18 financials to see the game’s impact. As for Ninja, he’s making at least $350,000/mo. in subscription fees streaming Fornite on Twitch. TIME pegged the figure at $560,000/mo. I’ve heard the number estimated to be as high as $1 million/mo.
Fan Marino: The City of Arlington and Esports Venues, LLC are investing $10 million into Arlington Convention Center to create a 100,000 SF esports stadium, the largest venue of its kind in North America. Their goal is to bring the “biggest tournaments in the esports industry to Arlington”, a potentially significant financial boon for the city if successful. How big is the opportunity? An old industrial city in Poland, with a population of 300,000, drew 113,000 people for the “World Cup of esports” last year.
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