There is no hard information on when this deal will be finalized and the exact amount that Google will be shelling out is not yet known (it is just expected to be over $1 Billion). The timing of this confirmation is interesting as it comes right after the massive DOAT 2 tournament The International. This tournament is one of the first eSports events to have been featured on a regular sports channel (ESPN2) and was also live streamed by Twitch.

As this is really a purchase by YouTube it is very likely that Twitch will become a service offering. The combination of YouTube and Twitch would be fairly significant in terms of revenue and traffic. As it stands right now, Twitch has over 50 million active users per month and sees a little more than 1 million user broadcasts each month as well. That is a lot of video (about 13 billion minutes) and when combined with the reach of YouTube it could bring the world of eSports to an even larger audience.

Although there are some concerns with Google’s ownership of Twitch, this could end up having some positive consequences as well. With YouTube and Google reach it could push eSports and competitive gaming out to a much larger market. This, in turn, could give the gaming industry a boost in just about all sectors (PC, Console etc). Of course this is all banking on the fact that Google does not simply absorb Twitch and roll the service into YouTube…

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