TGIF! In my newsletter today, one of the featured stories was a piece in Digiday about how and why publishers are experimenting with Twitch. Gaming is one of those hugely popular pursuits that seems to sit just outside the mainstream while also being solidly mainstream in terms of numbers and adoption.

Twitch is something that as a non-gamer punches into my feed every once and while just in terms of its size and its popularity. One of the best ways to understand Twitch for a media professional is that it’s a platform for live streaming eSports. Its stats are phenomenal, as one would expect from a platform that taps into the Attention Economy equivalent of a highly addictive drug that operates at the intersection of gaming and video.

• More than 15 m people watch Twitch daily, according to stats from April 2019.
• More than 404 hours of content have been streamed in the past year.
• “The most popular streamer, Ninja, earns at least $100,000 per month from Twitch alone.”
• It currently ranks as the 26th most popular website in the world and the 13th most popular in the US.
• Amazon bought Twitch in 2014 for a cool $970m, and its current value is $3.79 bn.
  Source: 99Firms.com

Digiday’s Kerry Flynn looked at why publishers are flocking to Twitch and their strategy on the platform. For eSports or gaming publishers, the move makes perfect sense. BuzzFeed Multiplayer, the digital publisher’s gaming channel, has some of its content available only to paying subscribers. The engagement for the content has some pretty staggering statistics, especially when you look at the amount of time that people are spending with the content. “One of Multiplayer’s most engaged streams was gameplay of ‘The Sims 4‘ and garnered more than 35,000 unique live views with more than 3,800 viewers watching for the entire three-hour stream and more than 4,300 viewers watching at once, according to the publisher.” Eeep.

But for publishers not working in the gaming space, the work is more experimental in nature. I recently watched a bit of the Washington Post’s video of one of their reporters playing a video game and interviewing Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, who also is one of the 25 members of his party running for president. It was a bit surreal for me, but I understand the Jedi mind trick of it. You get gamers to engage with political issues while a young-ish candidate plays video games. I would have to be well rested to talk about tax policy and play a video game.

But apart from tapping into this huge flood of attention, publishers are finding the comments on Twitch can be good. The Washington Post said that they found viewers asking some great questions about the Mueller report. It makes me think about whether there is a way regional publishers and broadcasters like the one I work can tap into this or if it’s just a place for national publishers who can get guests with a national profile. Lots of questions.

Well, this week is a wrap, almost. Hello to the new subscribers to the newsletter this week. If you aren’t a subscriber, you can get 10 media stories from around the world in your inbox week daily with very brief context by going to my Nuzzel profile and signing up. And if you spot a good story, let me know on Twitter, @kevglobal.