Entertainment Heavyweights Battle it Out as the Streaming War Heats Up
FN Media Group Presents Safehaven.com Market Commentary
NEW YORK, Dec. 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Multiple billions of dollars are being spent to weaponize the entertainment industry's streaming war, but there's a new front line in this epic battle that's gone unnoticed. It's the $200-billion gaming sector, where the celebrities make just as much, the stakes are even higher, and the battle is even bigger. Mentioned in today's commentary includes: Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE), Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).
Apple, Disney and Netflix are armoring up to win the streaming wars by wooing the most subscribers, but in the gaming sector, one little-known company has created a new front line. The winner takes all in this contest, and the prize is worth much more than subscriptions. The weapon is data, and the prize is a near-monopoly on streaming data.
The little-known company is Torque (GAME.V, MLLLD), and it's already secured a dominant position in data analytics for the gaming sector through its acquisition of Stream Hatchet.
Twitch is retail giant Amazon's video-streaming business that already has 15 million daily active users and is the gamer's version of Google's Youtube. In the esports segment of the massive gaming sector, Torque's Stream Hatchet is already bursting at the seams with data. That's because it's one of the leading data options in the entire sector. The massive advertising revenues depend on this data, and Stream Hatchet is the only game in town.
5 Reasons To Keep Keep An Eye On Torque:
#1 The Data Edge
Torque's (GAME.V, MLLLD) Stream Hatchet has just taken all the mystery out of the decision-making process for the video game industry by leveraging data. It's capturing EVERYTHING. That means all data from everything from Twitch, Facebook Gaming and Youtube Gaming to Smashcast, Mixer, Huya and much more: It's covered all bases when it comes to data streaming.
That's over $1 billion just in esports revenue that Stream Hatchett is leveraging for the top companies in the wider $200-billion gaming industry. And they're not done yet:
Next up, they're planning to pursue the goldmine of data for the entire gaming industry, the entire sports industry, and holy grail entertainment industry where a massive streaming war is hitting fever pitch right now.
#2 Formula 1 Brand Meets Streaming Giant
Torque (GAME.V, MLLLD) doesn't only have a dominant position on gaming data analytics, it's also got a partnership with the Formula 1 brand. Torque acquired Eden Games, the developer of the wildly popular F1 Mobile game that's been downloaded 13 million times since its launch just last year. Last year Formula 1 boasted an audience of over 1.7 billion, with nearly 500 million unique users.
And now they're heading to Twitch – a video game streaming platform which
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN
) purchased for over $1 billion. Though there's little information on the true numbers Amazon generates from the deal, with over 2.7 billion hours streamed in a single quarter in 2019, it's safe to say that it's a pretty decent amount.
When you bring together a competitive streaming data player and a brand like Formula 1 and put them on Twitch — you get a major powerhouse. It's another data coup for Torque because it just used Twitch to cash in on another massive audience for Formula 1: The younger generations. The average Formula 1 fan is 40, while the average Twitch audience is 21.
So, on one hand, you've got Twitch, which is the go-to platform for the younger demographic, with exploding data that has sports rights holders eyeing it as their key content outlet while traditional channels are getting squeezed.
On the other, you've got Torque, with Stream Hatchet—a leading industry player for providing data to rights holders, agencies and sponsors. This is where the streaming war gets real.
#3 Minting New Celebrities Who Earn More Than Anyone Else
Gamers are the new celebrities—and they stand to take home even more money. 17-year old Emil 'Nyhrox' Bergquist Pedersen and 16-year-old David 'Aqua' Wang took home the grand prize of $3 million in the Fortnite World Cup in July this year. The top racers in Torque's (GAME.V, MLLLD) World's Fastest Gamer take home a combined prize worth $1 million.
Twitch has turned gamers into celebrities, and the fashion industry has followed. Even Nike and Adidas are endorsing gamers in online tournaments watched by millions.
Nike (NYSE: NKE),
for its part, signed a four year sponsorship deal with the League of Legends Pro League. As part of the deal, the company announced that it will be analyzing competitors and even working on custom-training regimens to help keep players healthy.
Esports teams are selling for tens of millions of dollars…and the stars of this sports niche are earning a cool million every month. That's more than the top MLB players. This is the new reality of sports, and it's fueled by young, internet savvy enthusiasts who spend a collective 6.6 billion hours watching their favorite players. And this overlooked industry is forecasted by some analysts to get even bigger.
By next year, tech consulting firm Activate forecasts that 70 million people will watch a single esports final. And by 2021, esports is set to have 84 million viewers.
This is the fastest rise of almost any industry to date. Gaming is also beating Hollywood.
#4 A Branding Bonanza
While the Torque (GAME.V, MLLLD) group is busy tackling every single aspect of this market, from streaming data, media rights and advertising, to sponsorship and big game development, branding is exploding.
You already know they've locked onto the Formula 1 brand through Eden Games, which is the one of the biggest names in racing games. In fact, it's an obsession that has 10 teams worth over $4 billion. A single F1 race is watched by over 100 million people. What you don't know is this: Torque's also just secured exclusive partnerships with Porsche and Nintendo. And that all came to global attention in the final week of October with the launch of the long-awaited World's Fastest Gamer (WFG) competition. At stake are the biggest prize pool in esports racing history, worth a cool $1 million.
While the Fortnite 2018 World Cup was one of the biggest events in esports ever, with 40 million players competing for a total price pool of $30 million The World's Fastest Gamer has an important edge. It's exactly where real sports meets esports. It's where Fortnite meets Formula One. It's the best of both worlds. And while Torque is the king of blurring the lines between 'real' sports and esports, they'll come together in a massive brick-and-mortar branding move in Miami, where Torque is building the world's FIRST esports racing arena.
The massive arena will open its doors next year already and will be stocked with the most advanced esports racing simulators out there—designed by Formula 1 engineers and developed by a company called All In Sports, which Torque is also set to acquire.
#5 Recap: The Formula for Torque
As an epic streaming battle unfolds, little-known Torque is waging this war on the gaming front. For observers of Disney, Apple and Netflix, the streaming war is clear.
Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX),
of course, is the pioneer in this sector, and is ramping up original content as the battle for new and returning subscribers gets heavy. Though it has lost some key shows to its competitors, it is still hanging on, and is unlikely to go anywhere soon.
Disney (NYSE: DIS), on the other hand, is betting big on its in-house content and content from its acquisitions, including its merger with Fox and its $4 billion purchase of LucasFilms which is already paying off thanks to the wild success of the Star Wars franchise, including the recently released Mandalorian series which has become an internet sensation through its depiction of a baby Yoda.
What is yet to be seen, however, is how Apple
(NASDAQ: AAPL)
will contend with these behemoths. It too is looking to bank on original content, but unlike Netflix and Disney, the company is also juggling a tech empire which may even be leveraged to secure more subscriptions naturally. It also offers a more appealing subscription cost, coming in at $4.99 per month, as opposed to Disney's $6.99 and Netflix's $8.99 per month.
For the gaming industry, however, Torque has slipped in and not only scooped up the data everyone needs to create ad revenue, it has branded itself with the best of the best on the race track and beyond. That's all thanks a man best known as the 'Godfather' of esports, Darren Cox, Torque's CEO and former Global Motorsport Director for Nissan.
Cox has been transforming gamers into professional race car drivers for over a decade, and he's now a definitive expert when it comes to blurring the lines between reality and gaming. He's grown Torque (GAME.V, MLLLD) into an elite esports conglomerate, and the only company out there capable of connecting actual esports events and esports data.
Cox sees more than the road ahead — he's sees this entire arena and it's paved with data, the best in gaming, million-dollar prizes and a global audience that is growing by the minute.
By. Joao Piexe
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