MERRE LEJT AZ E-PÁLYA? – A TWITC H PIACI DOMINANCIÁJA AZ E-SPORTKÖZVETÍTÉSBEN
WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE TURNING – TWITCH’S DOMINANCE IN ESPORTS BROADCASTING

Author(s): Tibor Szabolcs Varga
Subject(s): Theory of Communication
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Keywords: Twitch; YouTube; Google; Facebook;
Summary/Abstract: Alongside YouTube, Twitch has become one of the most popular social content sharing and streaming services. The media platform, which has been in operation since 2011, became the 26th most visited website in 2019, with an average of more than 1.2 million viewers consuming content every second. It still lags behind its biggest competitor, YouTube, in the statistics, but it has emerged as the leader in user experience for streaming media thanks to its innovative solutions and community-building features. Its success in a short period of time has been driven by e-sports streaming, which has become synonymous with the platform. It is now clear that Twitch represents the definitive streaming experience for the average e-sports content consumer, making it much more difficult for other players to expand in this dynamic and growing industry. Over the past three years, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have all tried to carve out a slice of the e-sports streamingmarket, but viewers are reluctant to move away from Twitch because it would mean giving up their established consumer habits, Twitch’s unique features, and the social experience they have come to expect. This situation is also making it increasingly difficult for event organizers to operate, as Twitch’s dominance and viewer inflexibility reduces the possibility of selling exclusive streaming rights, which will be the industry’s most important source of revenue in the near future. In my presentation, I will explore this dilemma by looking at the success of Twitch, the consumer habits of e-sports broadcasting, and the attempts of competing streaming media platforms to link e-sports broadcasting to their own.

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