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Medal.tv, a video clipping service for gamers, enters the livestreaming market with Rawa.tv acquisition
Medal.tv, a short-form video clipping service and social network for gamers, is entering the livestreaming market with the acquisition of Rawa.tv, a Twitch rival based in Dubai, which had raised around $1 million to date. The seven-figure, all-cash deal will see two of Rawa’s founders, Raya Dadah and Phil Jammal, now joining Medal, and further integrations between the two platforms going forward.
The Middle East and North African region (MENA) is one of the fastest-growing markets in gaming and still one that’s mostly un-catered to, explained Medal.tv CEO Pim de Witte, as to his company’s interest in Rawa.
“Most companies that target that market don’t really understand the nuances and try to replicate existing Western or Far-Eastern models that are doomed to fail,” he said. “Absorbing a local team will increase Medal’s chances of success here. Overall, we believe that MENA is an underserved market without a clear leader in the livestreaming space, and Rawa brings to Medal the local market expertise that we need to capitalize on this opportunity,” de Witte added.
Medal.tv’s community had been asking for the ability to do livestreaming for some time, the exec also noted, but the technology would have been too expensive for the startup to build using off-the-shelf services at its scale, de Witte said.
“People increasingly connect around live and real-time experiences, and this is something our platform has lacked to date,” he noted.
But Rawa, as the first livestreaming platform dedicated to Arab gaming, had built out its own proprietary live and network streaming technology that’s now used in all its products. That technology is now coming to Medal.tv.
Image Credits: Medal.tv
The two companies were already connected before today, as Rawa users have been able to upload their gaming clips to Medal.tv, and some Rawa partners had joined Medal’s skilled player program. Going forward, Rawa will continue to operate as a separate platform, but it will become more tightly integrated with Medal, the company says. Currently, Rawa sees around 100,000 active users on its service.
The remaining Rawa team will continue to operate the livestreaming platform under co-founder Jammal’s leadership following the deal’s close, and the Rawa HQ will remain based in Dubai. However, Rawa’s employees have been working remotely since the start of the pandemic, and it’s unclear if that will change in the future, given the uncertainty of COVID-19’s spread.
Medal.tv detailed its further plans for Rawa on its site, where the company explained it doesn’t aim to build a “general-purpose” livestreaming platform where the majority of viewers don’t pay — a call-out that clearly seems aimed at Twitch. Instead, it says it will focus on matching content with viewers who would be interested in subscribing to the creators. This addresses one of the challenges that has faced larger platforms like Twitch in the past, where it’s been difficult for smaller streamers to get off the ground.
The company also said it will remain narrowly focused on serving the gaming community as opposed to venturing into non-gaming content, as others have done. Again, this differentiates itself from Twitch which, over the years, expanded into vlogs and even streaming old TV shows. And it’s much different from YouTube or Facebook Watch, where gaming is only a subcategory of a broader video network.
The acquisition follows Medal.tv’s $9 million Series A led by Horizons Ventures in 2019, after the startup had grown to 5 million registered users and “hundreds of thousands” of daily active users. Today, the company says over 200,000 people create content every day on Medal, and 3 million users are actively viewing that content every month.
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Twitch introduces Animated Emotes for their 10th anniversary
Twitch announced today that it will release major updates to its Emotes this month to celebrate its 10th anniversary. These new features will include Animated Emotes, Follower Emotes and a Library for Emotes.
Since the origin of the livestreaming platform for gamers, Emotes — Twitch’s version of emojis — have been a key component of Twitch culture. They’re micro memes, and images like Kappa, TriHard and PogChamp have come to carry meaning in the greater gaming world, even off the Twitch platform.
“Emotes are a language that transcends countries,” said Ivan Santana, senior director of Community Product at Twitch. “Anywhere you are in the world, they mean the same thing for us.”
The Amazon-owned platform regularly adds new global Emotes, which can be used on any streamer’s channel. Individual creators can make custom Emotes for their own community, which paying subscribers can use across the platform. But the ability to add animated gifs as Emotes is something that the community has been asking for since Santana can remember.
“I’ve been at Twitch for four years, and it’s something people have been asking for since before I joined,” Santana told TechCrunch. “It’s certainly been a very, very long time.”
Streamers who lack animation skills need not worry. While the more tech-savvy among us can upload custom gifs, Twitch will provide six templates for streamers to choose from, which can animate their existing Emotes. These animations include Shake, Rave, Roll, Spin, Slide In and Slide Out. Viewers who are sensitive to animations will be able to turn off the feature in their Chat Settings.
Image Credits: Twitch
Twitch is also beta testing Follower Emotes, which will be available to select Partners and Affiliates. This feature creates a fun, free incentive for viewers to hit the follow button on a channel they might be checking out for the first time. When viewers follow a channel, they’ll be notified when the creator is streaming, which can lead to an eventual subscription. Twitch takes 50% of streamers’ subscription money, creating a valuable revenue stream for the company.
In Q1 of 2021, Twitch viewership hit an all-time high, growing 16.5% since the previous quarter. Twitch viewers watched 6.34 billion hours of content in Q1, making up 72.3% of the market share. That’s double the total hours watched on Twitch in Q1 of 2020. Facebook Gaming and YouTube Gaming earned 12.1% and 15.6% of viewership in the sector, respectively.
“For a long time, creators have been asking for better ways to attract and welcome new viewers into their channel,” said Santana. “The idea is generally to create a lot of excitement around that community, and more feelings ultimately of community.”
Creators with beta access will be able to upload up to five Emotes for their followers, but unlike Subscriber Emotes, followers won’t be able to use these across other channels. There’s no guarantee that Follower Emotes will be here to stay — Santana says it’s a feature Twitch is “experimenting” with — but if all goes well, the feature will roll out more widely later in the year.
Finally, the Library function will make it easier for creators to swap Emotes in and out of subscription tiers without having to delete and reupload them each time. This builds upon an upgrade that launched in January, which centralized channel-specific icons into an Emotes tab on the Creator Dashboard. As usual, new Emotes have to be approved by Twitch before they’re put into use. The Library will roll out soon to all Partners and Affiliates, staggered over a few months to account for an expected increase in volume of new Emotes.
“As Twitch has scaled, we now have millions of communities across many different cultures across the world,” Santana said. “We can hand over more of the controls of our Emote language to our community, and let them sort of evolve in a way that we never could imagine that ultimately serves them in their unique ways.”
Twitch teased that there’s more in the works to celebrate the platform’s 10th anniversary, including an official 10-Year celebration.
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Twitch to top 40 million US viewers next year, forecast says
Twitch, the Amazon-owned streaming service for gamers, is poised to surpass 40 million monthly active viewers in the U.S. as of next year, according to a new forecast from eMarketer out on Thursday. By 2023, it will reach 47 million viewers. Currently, the analyst firm estimates Twitch has 37.5 million viewers in the U.S. who tune in to watch at least once per month.
Officially, Twitch reports it has more than 3 million active monthly creators and over 15 million average daily streamers, per its own website. But it focuses on metrics like minutes watched and concurrent viewers to paint a picture of its size and growth.
While Twitch continues to gain new viewers in the U.S., the new forecast indicates Twitch’s growth is slowing due to increased competition from YouTube, Microsoft’s Mixer and Facebook Gaming. This backs up findings from a separate report released last month, which found that Twitch’s loss of top streaming talent began to impact hours watched and streamed on its site in Q4 2019.
While none of the defections knocked out Twitch from its No. 1 position, it is starting to slow down its growth across a number of key metrics.
Last year, for example, Twitch lost top streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek to Mixer, plus Jack “CouRage” Dunlop to YouTube, and Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang and Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios to Facebook Gaming. Corinna Kopf, a member of David Dobrik’s “Vlog Squad,” also left Twitch for Facebook at the very end of December.
The defections continued in Q1 2020, with Ronda Rousey moving exclusively to Facebook Gaming earlier this month.
Despite these losses, eMarketer says Twitch will still see double-digit growth in the U.S. this year, up 14.3% from 2019. However, that’s down from 23.5% growth last year. And in the following years, growth will continue to slow, dropping to 6.3% by 2023.
The report stresses that Twitch needs to find ways to retain its gaming talent going forward, instead of losing them to better deals offered by rivals. It will also likely continue to invest in its expansion beyond gaming, as non-gaming traffic drove significant viewership in 2019. Twitch’s “Just Chatting” category, for instance, was watched more than any game on the site in December and was No. 2 in January, according to StreamElements.
“[Twitch’s] platform is designed for live streaming video and streamer/viewer interaction; these features are certainly intriguing to content creators outside of gaming,” noted eMarketer forecasting analyst Peter Vahle.
This is the first time the analyst firm has estimated the number of people watching Twitch on a regular basis — a decision it likely made because of how large Twitch has become.
“Twitch,” said Vahle, “…is now too big for the internet giants to ignore. The big platforms, owned by the likes of Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, are competing to sign big deals with popular streamers and esports leagues. Twitch will have to find ways to encourage streamers — and viewers and advertisers — to stay on its platform now that other attractive options exist,” he added.
Another possible way for Twitch to boost viewership — and one not mentioned in eMarketer’s report — is to lean on its ties to parent company Amazon.
“Last year was actually our biggest year ever in terms of growth of Twitch on Fire TV,” Amazon’s Fire TV head Marc Whitten told TechCrunch in January, when talking about Fire TV’s 2020 plans.
Amazon is now thinking about how to better integrate Twitch and Fire TV — especially since Fire TV supports the integration of live content right on its homepage, and Twitch is a live-streaming service. With Fire TV’s now over 40 million monthly users, Amazon could easily send more viewers to Twitch if it just turned the dials a little.
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Twitch’s loss of top streamers impacts hours watched and streamed in Q4 2019, report says
The loss of several big-name streamers is finally taking its toll on Twitch, according to a new report from StreamLabs and Newzoo out today. In August 2019, top streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, announced his intention to leave Twitch for Microsoft Mixer. Several others have since defected as well, including competitive gamer Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, who went to Mixer in October, Jack “CouRage” Dunlop, who left in November for YouTube Live, and Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang, who also left in November, but went to Facebook Gaming.
The loss of Ninja hadn’t impacted the amount of time Twitch users spent watching content on the platform as of Q3 2019, but the total hours streamed had slightly dipped. As of Q4 2019, however, Twitch’s momentum began to slow.
While the Amazon-owned streaming site is still by far the leader in terms of hours of content both watched and streamed compared with rivals, with a market share of 75.1%, the number of hours watched on Twitch declined from Q3 to Q4 2019 by 9.8%.
This resulted in the lowest number of hours watched on the platform (2,299.6 million) since Q3 2018 (2,283.9 million).
That being said, Twitch overall is still growing, with a 12% increase in total hours watched on the platform in 2019 compared with 2018.
The high-profile losses are also now impacting the hours streamed on Twitch, the report found.
The platform in Q4 2019 saw the lowest number of hours streamed (82.7 million) since Q2 2018 (86 million). Again, the trend on a year-over-year basis is still climbing upwards, with a 16.1% increase in total hours streamed in 2019 versus 2018.
Twitch saw declines in the number of unique channels streaming over the course of 2019, too, dropping from 5.6 million in Q1 2019 — the highest ever — to 3.7 million by Q4.
Concurrent viewers declined on a quarterly basis by 9.4%. This is the lowest average concurrent viewership figure since Q3 2018. On an annual basis, however, concurrent viewership was still up by 12.3%. The average number of viewers per channel was stable and has increased by 12.5% since Q1 2018.
YouTube Gaming Live, meanwhile, became the only platform to see increases in hours watched, streamed and concurrent viewership in Q4 2019.
CourageJD’s move to YouTube Gaming Live has helped to boost Google’s platform, but the increases can also be attributed to YouTube’s broadcast of top esports events and influencer moments.
The total number of hours watched on YouTube Gaming Live grew 46% from Q1 to Q4 2019 to reach 909.1 million — making that the largest percentage increase among gaming sites. Hours streamed remained stable, closing the year at 12.3 million. Unique channels increased 4.8% on a quarterly basis, but declined 24.6% from Q1 2019.
YouTube Gaming Live’s biggest jump was in concurrent viewers, which grew by a sizable 33.8% in Q4 — making it the only platform to see an increase in average concurrent viewership in the quarter. Average viewers per channel also increased by 21% quarter-over-quarter — even though the number of unique streaming channels grew by 4.8%, which usually means a drop in average viewers per channel would occur.
YouTube Gaming Live closed the year with 22.1% market share.
Ninja’s move to Mixer has encouraged other streamers to start broadcasting on the platform, but despite that deal and the one with Shroud, the number of hours watched declined 8.5% quarter-over-quarter, from 90.2 million in Q3 2019 to 82.5 million in Q4 2019. But year-over-year, Mixer’s hours watched have more than doubled.
Ninja and Shroud have helped boost the number of hours streamed on Mixer, more than doubling the number of hours in Q3. But in Q4, the number of hours streamed dropped 12.9%, from 32.6 million to 28.4 million.
However, 80.3 million hours of content was streamed in 2019 versus just 35.2 million hours in 2018.
There also was a 7.5% decrease in the number of Mixer channels in Q4 (3.9 million to 3.6 million), but a 78% increased in 2019 compared with 2018. Mixer now has triple the number of unique channels streaming, compared with YouTube Gaming Live.
Average concurrent viewership on Mixer declined 8% from Q3 to Q4, but was up 55.1% year-over-year. Average viewers per channel remained stable.
Mixer closed the year with a 2.7% market share.
The report doesn’t include Facebook Gaming live streaming data. But it does note there was a 400% increase in the number of live streams in 2019, from 504,173 live streams in Q1 to 2,525,863 in Q4, based on Facebook Gaming streamers who used the Streamlabs’ OBS product. Additionally, the number of total hours streamed increased by 275%, from 438,835 in Q1 to 1,648,557 in Q4.
Also in Q4, several live streamers made the switch to Facebook, including Disguised Toast, as noted above, as well as Zero and Corinna Kopf. This also could have contributed to the momentum in the quarter, as well as launches of charity live streaming tools, and the arrival of the Facebook Gaming app in Thailand and Latin America.
For the year, the most-watched publisher was Riot Games, due to League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics. Epic Games (Fortnite) trailed by only 25.1 million hours. The latter saw a 29% decline, year-over-year, in terms of hours watched, while the former grew just 3.6%.
Similarly, League of Legends was the No. 1 game streamed on Twitch in 2019, followed by Fornite then Grand Theft Auto V. Fornite topped YouTube Gaming Live and Mixer.
While none of the streamers’ defections from Twitch have been significant enough to force the platform from its No. 1 position, it has created a healthier competitive landscape among streaming services. But in reality, it’s still too soon to see what long-term impacts the moves will have on Twitch and whether or not its rivals can continue their momentum in 2020.
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Twitch launches a four-person ‘Squad Stream’ feature to help creators get discovered
Twitch today announced the launch of a new feature called “Squad Stream,” which offers a way for up to four creators to go live and stream together within one window. The feature will allow creators to grow their communities by teaming up with others, as it gives streamers increased exposure by playing to a wider range of fans.
Helping viewers find new people to follow is an area of ongoing interest for the company which has, in the past, faced accusations from smaller streamers who complain they just broadcast to empty channels and have trouble growing a fan base.
To address this, Twitch today offers a feature called Raids, which allows creators to work together to grow their respective communities by driving traffic to each other’s channels. Squad Streams is an expansion on that as it’s actually allowing streamers to broadcast together. That is, instead of redirecting traffic, they’re sharing it.
To participate in Squad Streams, creators can join up with one another from their dashboard by way of a new Squad Stream widget. They can then start their own squad by inviting others to join in, or they can accept an invite to join another squad. By default, any channels the streamers follow, have friended or are on the same team can send out Squad Stream invites. But this can be changed in the settings.
During streams, viewers get to watch all creators in one window, which gives them different views on the action, Twitch explains.
During streaming, fans can chat or cheer whoever is in the primary slot — an option they get to choose by clicking on any of the channels’ video player to make in the larger screen. Ads will play only in the primary slot, and viewership also only gets counted when a channel is in the primary slot, Twitch also notes.
Unfortunately, the feature is launching first to Partners — the top-level streamers who are less in need of growing their community than smaller streamers. Twitch says this rollout strategy is due to the need for video quality options (transcodes) on the Squad Streams — an option Partners have on their streams by default. (Affiliates only receive them as they’re available, with priority access.)
The video quality options allows the Squad Stream feature to display the video in the non-primary slots in a lower-quality mode, like 480p. Most streamers, however, stream in 720p or above, which is why the options are needed for Squad Stream to work, says Twitch.
The company says its plan is to roll out Squad Stream to Affiliates and all other streamers in time, as it expands its transcodes capacity.
Squad Stream’s launch is being kicked off by a schedule of four-person streams over the weeks ahead. (A full schedule is here.) Users can also look for the Squad Stream tag on the main Twitch page to find these streams.
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Spotify for Xbox One now works with Cortana voice commands
Spotify arrived on the Xbox One back in August 2017 to give gamers the option of streaming their own tunes while in a gaming session. Today, Spotify is upgrading its app with a few key additions, including most notably support for Cortana voice control, along with other personalization features. With Cortana, gamers will be able to speak their music requests instead of using the controller. That means they can command the music — including being able to play, skip and pause songs — without having to leave their current gaming session, Spotify says.
Before, gamers would have to use Spotify Connect via an app on their phone, tablet or laptop to control or change the music while gaming.
For example, you’ll be able to say things like “Hey, Cortana, play my playlist on Spotify,” or “Hey Cortana, play my Discover Weekly on Spotify.”
This upgrade is currently only available in the U.S., however.
The new app is also introducing an updated experience that’s designed to make it easier for Spotify users to access recently played songs, plus your “Made for You” hub, and your music library.
Previously, Xbox One users only had access to basic Spotify controls, like play, pause, and skip plus visuals like the cover art and artist and song name. Now, they have personalized content recommendations, and the ability to playback content right from the Guide menu.
This part of the update is rolling out more broadly, including the U.S., as well as in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and the U.K.
Options like repeat and shuffle are available, too, as are a selection of curated gaming playlists, over on Spotify’s “Gaming Hub” if you get stumped as to what to play.
In the future, updates to this Enhanced Background Mode, as Spotify calls the new experience, may include the ability to promote game specific content for major game launches, Spotify says.
The update will require the latest version of the Spotify app, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store, the company notes.
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Microsoft’s new Mixer Create app lets you live stream games from your phone
Microsoft’s mobile game streaming app Mixer Create is launching out of beta testing today on iOS and Android, allowing gamers to broadcast the games they’re playing right from their phone. This feature works on Android with all games, but is more limited on iOS. On iPhone, select games that have enabled Apple’s ReplayKit functionality will work, the company notes. That… Read More
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Twitch opens up its money-making tools to tens of thousands of non-Partnered channels
On the heels of yesterday’s news about expanded subscription options for partners, video streaming site Twitch today announced another way for its creator community to generate revenue, with the launch of an Affiliate program. Explains the company, the new program will allow non-partnered video creators to gain access to a variety of tools that will allow them to make money from… Read More
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Twitch to start selling video games this week
Video game streaming site Twitch will soon begin selling PC games and other in-game content on its site, the company says. We understand the games may arrive as soon as tomorrow or later this week, though the exact timing is still in flux. Already one of the top destinations for live streaming and fan engagement, it’s not surprising that Twitch would take the final step… Read More
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Crunchyroll-owner Ellation announces Vrv, a multi-channel, streaming video service
Digital media company Ellation is announcing a big push into streaming video with Vrv, which will offer a variety of channels aimed at gamers and other geeks.
Ellation is best known as the parent company of anime service Crunchryoll. Otter Media, the joint venture from Chernin Group and AT&T, acquired a majority stake in the company back in 2013 and invested another $22 million last… Read More
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