14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube is buying Twitch, a videogame-streaming company, and it has agreed to pay more than $1 billion (€730 million)for the purchase.
According to Variety, the deal is an all-cash offer and it makes for the most important purchase in the history of YouTube.
On the other hand, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the two companies are truly discussing things, but the contract hasn’t been signed yet, citing other sources who claim that the “deal isn’t imminent” yet.
Instead, while Google is interested in investing in Twitch, it looks like the videogame-streaming company was also considering to raise some more money rather than sell. While the deal hasn’t been announced formally just yet, it looks like the two companies are to inform everyone in the very near future. Considering that the secret is out, they may have to do it earlier than originally desired.
Twitch enables users to upload and watch free, live gameplay videos. These can be streamed from several consoles directly, making for a rather cool addition for YouTube, especially since some of the most popular channels on the platform are dedicated to gamers.
The deal could face some troubles in the United States, as regulators are likely to analyze the acquisition to see if it raises any anti-competitive issues in the online video market.
That’s because Twitch has some 45 million monthly visitors and 1 million members who upload content each month. At the same time, YouTube is by far the most popular video streaming site in the world. It serves some 6 billion hours of video each month and has 1 billion users. Mixing these two together makes for a rather interesting combination that could cause some troubles for anyone trying to compete.
It’s unclear at this point what YouTube would do with Twitch, whether it would integrate the features it carries into its own platform and create a special area dedicated to all-things gaming or if it would just support it.
Considering the $1 billion price tag attached to the deal, Google could even choose to let Twitch be an entity of its own. Several years ago, when it paid $1.65 billion (€1.2 billion) for YouTube, Google chose it because it thought the platform was good enough to help it grow rather than start from scratch and build its own.
Either way, Google and Twitch won’t be able to ignore addressing the rumors forever so we should soon find out whether they’re still discussing things over, the deal is already done, or there’s actually no purchase to speak of.