Twitch may be turning into a “zombie brand”
Ten years after its $1 billion purchase of game streaming platform Twitch, Amazon is still looking for a return on its investment. The Wall Street Journal has seen some internal figures for the business unit, and there are few signs that it will generate profits anytime soon.
According to the report, some employees fear Twitch might become a “zombie brand” within Amazon, joining Goodreads, Woot, and Mechanical Turk, in the walking-dead land of once-promising acquisitions and projects that have been left to rot.
The streaming platform is expensive to run, difficult to monetize, and facing slower growth. The Journal reported that in 2023, Twitch generated $667 million in ad revenue, and $1.3 billion in commerce revenue (subscriptions and digital products). ~$2 billion may sound significant, but it’s a drop in Amazon’s revenue bucket — less than 0.5% of the company’s 2023 total.
The platform is trying to move to shorter video clips and diversify its offerings from just live streaming of video games. But after gorging on content during the pandemic, its users are spending less time watching Twitch streams, and ad revenue has remained flat.
The streaming platform is expensive to run, difficult to monetize, and facing slower growth. The Journal reported that in 2023, Twitch generated $667 million in ad revenue, and $1.3 billion in commerce revenue (subscriptions and digital products). ~$2 billion may sound significant, but it’s a drop in Amazon’s revenue bucket — less than 0.5% of the company’s 2023 total.
The platform is trying to move to shorter video clips and diversify its offerings from just live streaming of video games. But after gorging on content during the pandemic, its users are spending less time watching Twitch streams, and ad revenue has remained flat.
