When Twitch‘s new CEO Dan Clancy took over, he admitted the world’s biggest livestreaming platform is not profitable. And, according to internal documents viewed by the Wall Street Journal, employees think it’s in danger of becoming a “zombie brand” buried, untended, in the depths of its parent Amazon. We don’t know what the hard chances are of that happening, but we think it’d be a big fumble if Amazon abandoned the site responsible for platforming some of today’s star and rising-star creators, like Kai Cenat, Ironmouse, HasanAbi, and Jynxzi.
Since Amazon acquired Twitch for almost $1 billion back in 2014, it hasn’t broken out the platform’s revenue in its own earnings calls. So, for years, we’ve had no access to financial information indicating how Twitch is performing. But the documents WSJ reviewed showed Twitch earned $667 million in ad revenue in 2023–just 0.116% of Amazon’s total revenue for the year ($575 billion), and a little over 2% of the $31.51 billion YouTube made in 2023.
The documents also showed that Twitch’s whales–the people who put money in for channel subscriptions, Bits, donations, and more–are spending less and less on average, and that third-party data indicates new user growth and current user engagement are slowing, too. (WSJ didn’t provide exact numbers for those downturns, but we have seen other data indicate them before now.)
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At the same time, though, Twitch’s content is getting bigger than ever. Cenat’s recent stream with Kevin Hart and Druski set a new viewership record with 712,600 concurrent viewers (beating out Ninja and Drake‘s 600,000-viewer record from 2018). We’re also seeing more celebrities transition into having Twitch accounts, like Post Malone, Formula One racer Charles Leclerc, and Stranger Things actress Grace Van Dien. Plus, politicians like Donald Trump are using it to document their campaign events.
So, is it possible Twitch’s cultural relevancy will weigh heavier in Amazon’s coinpurse than its ad revenue? We’re not sure. Employees who spoke to WSJ seem to have a dismal view on things, anticipating yet another round of layoffs will come with Twitch’s annual fall operational review.
Amazon refutes these worries: A spokesperson told WSJ the company has a “long-term view” of Twitch and said it’s particularly adept at connecting with harder-to-reach audiences.
That’s true–Twitch’s blend of many niches combined with its immediate, interactive nature can make for strong growth of microcosmic communities. And if brands in those microcosmic communities want to reach people with ads, Twitch might be one of the few places they can do so outside of things like interest-specific events, forums, and newsletters.
Twitch drove more than 1.3 trillion watch hours in 2023, but people familiar with the matter said the platform’s problem is that it struggles to sell ads on all those minutes. Compare that to a platform like YouTube, which, yes, has gone through its periods of advertiser concern, but by and large has figured out how to effectively run ads on pretty much everything, including livestreams.
The bottom line here is that for now, Twitch’s pop culture oomph isn’t equaling ad dollars, with staffers worried the platform isn’t on the path to profitability–and that, because of this, Amazon will leave it to quietly die. We hope that’s not the case.
