> Considering the high payouts to streamers, the lack of benefits for premium members, the long streaming hours of games which incurs server costs and makes it difficult to display ads, I don't think their business model is sustainable in the long run.
I don't game and I don't use twitch, but...
> the high payouts to streamers
This worked really well on Youtube and other platforms.
> the lack of benefits for premium members
If people are still subscribing without many benefits imagine what will happen if they introduce more? That's worked well for Amazon in other areas (eg Prime)
> long streaming hours of games which incurs server costs
I mean there is some server cost but this seems very manageable. I've done a bunch of video streaming work and the server requirements aren't high if you know what you are doing. Bandwith is hard sometimes but I suspect Amazon can optimize their bandwidth deals as well as anyone.
> makes it difficult to display ads
This seems wrong. The whole broadcast TV model is built around 24/7 ads.
> I don't think their business model is sustainable in the long run.
I take the opposing view. I think Twitch has the potential to be one of the biggest sources of revenue growth at Amazon.
Care to share the clever way? I've put on a number of small-scale (high triple digit/low four digit concurrent viewers) streamed events and have always gotten pretty slammed by both cpu and transfer using nginx-rtmp published via hls.
Delivering the video isn't where I think most of the costs are. They've a few times its the free transcode service they offer to just about any one who streams on the platform is where much of their costs are.
having an adbreak right when the most important play of the game is made would really be annoying. It's not like broadcast tv where there are things like time slots and designated ad spots.
That's why Twitch gives you tons of tools to schedule ads and manually trigger them at less disruptive times. It requires the streamer to care about not disrupting their stream enough to plan ahead and preemptively run ads and not just hope they auto-run at the right time.
This very seldom happens to actual competitive events (which often have special deals that require them to run less ads), and most bigger streamers have worked out running ads between games.
I don't game and I don't use twitch, but...
> the high payouts to streamers
This worked really well on Youtube and other platforms.
> the lack of benefits for premium members
If people are still subscribing without many benefits imagine what will happen if they introduce more? That's worked well for Amazon in other areas (eg Prime)
> long streaming hours of games which incurs server costs
I mean there is some server cost but this seems very manageable. I've done a bunch of video streaming work and the server requirements aren't high if you know what you are doing. Bandwith is hard sometimes but I suspect Amazon can optimize their bandwidth deals as well as anyone.
> makes it difficult to display ads
This seems wrong. The whole broadcast TV model is built around 24/7 ads.
> I don't think their business model is sustainable in the long run.
I take the opposing view. I think Twitch has the potential to be one of the biggest sources of revenue growth at Amazon.
Look how well YouTube has done for Google.