As its rivalry with Google heats up, Amazon is reportedly offering popular YouTubers multimillion-dollar contracts to switch to Twitch
- Amazon is making efforts to win over content creators to its livestreaming platform, Twitch, Bloomberg reports.
- Twitch is said to be offering exclusive deals, sometimes with multi-million dollar salaries, to popular internet personalities.
- Twitch seems to want to swoop in at a time when some creators are unsure about YouTube and its effectiveness as a revenue stream.
- The two video platforms are competing heavily to convince streamers and creators to stay on their respective platforms.
Amazon's ongoing rivalry with Google is heating up, and it's now setting its sights on some of the stars of Google-owned YouTube.
Amazon is offering exclusive deals, sometimes with multi-million dollar salaries attached, to content creators in an effort to convince them to stick with Twitch instead of its rival, YouTube, Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw reports.
Although Twitch was solely focused on video game streaming before its acquisition by Amazon in 2014, Amazon is trying to broaden the appeal of the once-niche streaming platform in order to attract a wider variety of content creators, and in the end-run, earn more ad revenue, according to the report. Popular personalities approached range from Will Smith to Gigi Gorgeous, according to Bloomberg.
YouTube is a behemoth when it comes to unique viewers - it had more than 10 times Twitch's 11 million unique visits in June, according to ComScore. But YouTube has been weathering a rocky year as it continues to manage its relationships with content creators, and Amazon is looking to capitalize on it.
No longer just a video game streaming site, Twitch allows all sorts of streaming - from IRL (in real life) streams of everyday life, to dedicated baking and cooking channels, Twitch is hoping to expand its audience - and it reportedly has set an internal goal of $1 billion in ad revenue.
YouTube isn't staying passive, however, as Bloomberg reports the company is offering payments to creators if they don't take any deals with competitors like Twitch.
Twitch has had a reputation as a video game-centered website for a while, but in order to take on YouTube, Amazon will likely have to change that, and its efforts have already begun.