What Happened to Twitch?
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #91 - The End of an Era. Check out the full article for more insights.
Twitch, the popular streaming service for gamers, had an impressive year of growth in 2020 which continued into 2021. Net revenue in the U.S. rose from $24 million in 2019 to $107 million in 2020, according to our estimates.
I'll give that a minute to sink in.
That didn't stop in 2020. Between January and November, Twitch brought in more than $175 million, a 63% increase over 2020.
But...
In October, a massive hack was disclosed, and ever since, revenue is looking a little different.
According to our App Intelligence, on an average day, Twitch brings in around $450,000 in net revenue in the U.S. across both the App Store and Google Play.
Towards the end of November, a little more than a month after the hack was disclosed, daily revenue started dropping. And fast. It hit a low point in early December, earning just $215,000 in net revenue in the U.S., which is less than half their daily average.
It managed to recover a bit, but it's still averaging about a half.
Why? Twitch's in-app purchases are subscription purchases used by its users to give money to streamers on the platform (of which Twitch takes a small fee). A drop in revenue means that users are canceling their subscriptions, which is also why the drop didn't happen immediately—existing subscriptions weren't renewed.
Are they canceling it because they don't want their data leaked? Maybe it's because seeing how much the top streamers earn is making them think those streamers don't need more?
What I see here is that given how attractive others platforms are trying to be for game streaming, this might push even more creators to stream cross-platform.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
