Amazon Buys Live-Stream Gaming Site Twitch for $970 Million

SEATTLE: Amazon.com has reached a deal to acquire Twitch Interactive, a live video platform for gamers, for $970 million in cash.

In the month of July alone, more than 55 million unique visitors viewed more than 15 billion minutes of content on Twitch. The content on the platform is produced by more than 1 million broadcasters, including individual gamers, pro players, publishers, developers, media outlets, conventions and e-sports organizations.

“Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month—from The International to breaking the world record for Mario to gaming conferences like E3. And, amazingly, Twitch is only three years old,” said Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community.”

“Amazon and Twitch optimize for our customers first and are both believers in the future of gaming,” added Emmett Shear, Twitch's CEO. “Being part of Amazon will let us do even more for our community. We will be able to create tools and services faster than we could have independently. This change will mean great things for our community, and will let us bring Twitch to even more people around the world.”