Twitch.TV Acquired By Amazon For $1 Billion‏

Amazon has acquired Twitch.TV for $970 million earlier today, the deal was officially announced after two months of silence from Google and Twitch. Amazon’s name had only cropped up one day before the announcement, previously Google had been the only bidder.

Twitch.TV is the largest video game streaming service, we first heard the owners wanted to shift the ownership to Google two months ago. It appears Twitch was also in talks to sell the broadcasting platform off to Amazon, and Google pulled out due to antitrust issues.

Amazon has plenty of reasons to acquire Twitch.TV, the most important one being it is one of the fastest growing streaming services and the most popular spot for eSports. There is also a lot of revenue to be made from the streaming platform, if utilised correctly.

Twitch.TV already has revenue programs through advertising, subscription, and Turbo, but all of these revenue platforms are basic. With Amazon’s help, they could develop more customisation, targeted advertising and even add Turbo into the Amazon Prime package.

Amazon also has Amazon Web Services (AWS), which powers Netflix, Pinterest, Reddit, Foursquare and more. The new cloud service will allow Twitch.TV to run more smoothly, add new video player options and keep the website from going down at peak times.

In return for all of this expense, we expect Amazon will make the advertisements more focused on Amazon’s e-commerce website, get a Twitch.TV app for everything Kindle and perhaps look towards integrating some of their free-to-play games more heavily.

The deal is still not finalised, but we cannot see the Department of Justice taking Amazon to court for antitrust issues, like they would have done with Google.