MANILA, Philippines – Sources of entertainment magazine Variety report that YouTube has reached a deal to acquire popular game streaming platform Twitch for an all-cash offer of more than $1 billion. A separate report from the Wall Street Journal corroborates the story but says negotiations are “at an early stage, and a deal isn’t imminent.”
Twitch and YouTube currently do not have official statements on the matter.
If it pushes through, the acquisition would be the largest for YouTube since it was acquired by Google back in 2006 for $1.65 billion.
The acquisition makes sense for YouTube. With over a billion users streaming game matches live on Twitch, video games have become almost as much a spectator sport as football.
Since its founding in 2011, Twitch has grown into one of the largest sources for peak broadband traffic in the US. A recent report by Internet infrastructure company DeepField puts Twitch at 4th in peak Internet traffic with 1.8% behind Netflix (32%), Google (22%) and Apple (4.3%) and ahead of Hulu (1.7%) and Facebook (1.5%).
Variety also reports that YouTube is preparing for a challenge from US Regulators and the Justice Department over concerns that it will raise anti-competitive issues in the online-video market. – Rappler.com
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