Streaming Platforms… Who Cares?

I was drinking my cup of coffee today while skimming over Twitter this morning as I have done every day for the past seven or eight years. My timeline is/used to be exactly the info that I wanted to see when I wanted to see it. Twitter is determined to piss me off and keep me from seeing the content that I want when I want, but that is a different blog altogether.

I saw an article that said ESL(I know some good folks over there and wish them the best) had chosen Facebook to be their streaming partner for CSGO and Dota 2 events. You can read more about that here https://www.dexerto.com/news/esl-surprises-everyone-partnering-facebook/42569. I made a snarky comment this morning that was met with some agreement and some disagreement. “ESL picked Facebook as their streaming partner tears of joy emoji and rolling on the floor laughing emoji here:).

One person even said that my tweet was unprofessional and bad for the industry, I can argue that point till the cows come home but, I’d rather talk about what is bad for the industry. That is decisions that are made that on the surface seem only to take into consideration of the profitability of the business. Am I the only one who views this partnership with Facebook as a pure money grab? I mean, why else would you choose to work so hard to take your core users and try to pull them from a platform they love called Twitch? It didn’t work too well just a year earlier when you moved from Twitch to YouTube, so why would moving from YouTube to Facebook be any different?

A year ago this month ELeague hit one million concurrent viewers on their Twitch channel for the major and I think ESL have hit numbers close to that on their Twitch channel as well. Twitch is in a very powerful position, and its parent company(Amazon, in case you live under a rock) will probably be the first trillion-dollar market cap company in the world.

“Twitch won’t play ball and give us what we want, we will take our business elsewhere.” I would have no clue if that were said, so please forgive my awful sense of humor. I can hear it now, “Scotty why are you carrying water for Twitch, do you owe Twitch or their employees a favor?” Hell no, I’m trying to push an agenda, that agenda is very simple. Twitch is the best streaming platform in the world, and the fans of the best esports in the world deserve to watch them on the best platform in the world.

When Facebook builds a better mousetrap than Twitch, let me know, and I’ll gladly try it out until then let’s try not to cater too much to the non-endemic brands that have proven they will dip in the space and dip back out of the space when it’s convenient for them.