With competitors, Facebook, Mixer and YouTube eating away at its market share in the US, games streaming platform Twitch is now beefing up its Asia Pacific operations. For the first time, it has hired an MD to look after the region. Sunita Kaur, who was until recently at Spotify, has stepped into that role after holding many exec profiles across Asia at the likes of Facebook, Forbes and Microsoft. This makes the stance of Amazon-owned Twitch pretty clear, the brand would like to ensure it strengthens its first-mover advantage and position in arguably the most game and content crazy population in the world.
“Asia is a burgeoning region for user-generated live content and gaming, and we are excited to deepen our investments with Sunita’s hire,” said Twitch COO Sara Clemens. “Sunita’s 20 years of experience in digital advertising and online services and communities that serve content creators in APAC make her the perfect leader for Twitch’s business in the region.”
Prior to this Kaur served as the Southeast Asia MD for Spotify and further as the VP Revenue – APAC. She was instrumental in expanding Spotify through, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
What is Twitch?
Twitch is the world’s largest platform for live streaming games. According to a recent report it holds 61 per cent market share in the live game-streaming segment, followed by YouTube Gaming, Facebook Gaming and Microsoft’s Mixer.
What has changed recently?
According to the aforementioned report, albeit the Amazon-owned streaming giant holds the top position in market share, much further ahead than its contemporaries; other platforms are showing growth, while Twitch experienced a slight dip in the previous year.
Also, apart from gaming content from titles like Fortnite and League of Legends topping charts in terms of hours, the segment “Just Chatting,” the name being self-explanatory, ruled the platform in terms of hours.
What are the prospects of its competitors?
YouTube Gaming’s share was steady with 27.9 per cent of the market share from 27.5 per cent in the previous year worldwide. Microsoft’s streaming service Mixer swelled its share to 2.6 per cent from 2 per cent in 2018. Facebook gaming, according to StreamElements CEO Doron Nir will become a meaningful player in this category by 2021. As the social media platform brings in more influencers and specific features targeted at the game streaming biz, the growth seems not very surprising.
How does talent relate to viewership in these platforms?
According to reports, total hours watched on Twitch fell to 2.3 million during the final quarter of last year, down from 2.6 million the quarter before (although overall watch time was up). This has apparently happened because of some high profile streamers like Ninja and Shroud leaving the platform, as they headed to Mixer. Even YouTube saw the entry of another popular streamer CouRage.
What lies ahead?
It would be interesting to see how the viewership patterns and content creation and consumption change over the coming year. It is unlikely that anyone will be dethroning Twitch anytime soon, but given the rise of other stable, streaming platforms Twitch will surely be keeping an eye out and up their efforts.