Buying Twitch Gets Google More Than Video Game Spectators

Attendees walk past televisions showing live streams of Twitch Interactive's video service during the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on June 10Photograph by Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

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By Joshua Brustein

July 25, 2014 at 5:26 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Google appears to have reached an agreement to buy Twitch, a company whose main business is live-streaming videos of people playing video games. A pending deal was first reported by Variety in May, and now VentureBeat says an arrangement has been finalized and will be worth more than $1 billion. If such a deal goes through, it would be a massive validation for the burgeoning industry of watching other people play games.

Video game competitions have emerged as a business big enough to support tournaments with multimillion-dollar purses and stadiums in California and Macau. Live-streaming capabilities are now built into gaming consoles and mobile devices. All of this means that Twitch would be having its moment, even without Google’s interest. (Google and Twitch both declined comment.)