The NBA and Twitch have agreed to a multi-year partnership that makes the video streaming service the league’s first official media rights partner. The agreement ensures that the inaugural season of the NBA 2K League will be broadcast live, in its entirety (up to 199 games); with all games featuring live commentary and updates from around the league. Twitch has announced plans to introduce “Extensions” to increase viewer engagement during broadcasts (they’re going to need to draw viewers first, see Fan below). Twitch is a Founding Partner (i.e. they’ll have an equity stake) of the upstart league.
Howie Long-Short: Twitch was acquired by Amazon (AMZN) for $970 million, back in 2014. The company increased concurrent viewership +21% during Q1 ’18 (to 953,000), growing its already large lead within the game streaming market over 2nd place YouTube Gaming (GOOGL, -12% to 272,000). Facebook (FB, +103% to 56,000) and Microsoft’s (MSFT, +90% to 9,500) also reported significant growth with their streaming audiences last quarter.
As for AMZN, the company posted its most profitable quarter ever in Q1 ’18. It grew revenue +43% to $35.7 billion, while net income rose 121% to $1.6 billion. Cloud computing (+49% YoY to $5.44 billion), subscription services (+60% YoY to $3.1 billion) and ad revenue (+139% YoY to $2.03 billion) all contributed to the record quarter.
Fan Marino: The NBA 2K League’s inaugural season kicked off yesterday, with Bucks Gaming and Pistons GT participating in the league’s first ever game (Pistons won 49-44). Just 9,000 watched the contest, a particularly disappointing total considering OWL’s opening day drew 408,000 concurrent viewers. This league is far from the slam dunk predicted following last month’s successful gamer draft.
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