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Twitch Wants to Be a Home for Traditional Sport as Well as Esports
32,000 people saw Team USA play a rubber basketball game in Australia at 7:30am Eastern this week. ICYMI: sports is a thing.
What were you doing at 6am Eastern on Thursday? If you’re like most people, you were likely tucked up in bed.
But a surprising number of people were logged onto Twitch, watching Kemba Walker bag 23 points as Team USA trounced Australia 102–86 at an exhibition game in Melbourne, Australia. At its peak, 32,000 people were watching on.
And no, we’re not talking about a simmed game on NBA 2K20. For one thing, that’s not released for another two weeks. This is real sports. In Australia. At a godawful time of day. On Twitch.
It should come as a surprise to no-one that sports is a thing. But how big of a thing it is on a website best known for computer-coded, polygonal representations of sports has surprised even those inside the company.
While Twitch has traditionally been the home of esports, it has recently moved into live, non-gaming streams — the genre of videos formerly known as IRL streams, and now grouped under the “Just Chatting” vertical on the website.
“When you think about it, it’s not just a gaming platform,” says Eranga De Silva of Esports Game Association Australia, an esports industry body. “It’s a broadcast platform.
“It’s much more accessible than TV, you can watch it on the go at any time, all you need is a device,” he says. It fits in with the lifestyle that the key demographics — 15- to 35-year-olds — lead these days. It’s actually a no brainer.”
The streaming platform agrees. This week, when you visit Twitch, USA basketball is as visible as many video games.
“Twitch has a long history in terms of celebrating sports,” says Chase, head of communications for StreamElements, a provider of livestream tools and services, and former PR…
