Caffeine is one of the latest emerging live streaming platforms. It is geared toward the gaming, entertainment and sports industries. The platform was created in 2017 by Ben Keighran, who used to work as a designer for Apple. It was pre-released for two years, then it was officially released in 2019. Caffeine serves as a marketing and advertising tool because it allows users or businesses to broadcast live, enabling them to promote anything including brands.
There are already other platforms that offer similar streaming services, which makes is a little more difficult for Caffeine to differentiate their product from the others that have already saturated the market. The main competitors are Twitch, Mixer, YouTube Gaming as well as Facebook Gaming. The biggest competitor and someone that Caffeine’s team should take notes from is Amazon’s Twitch. Twitch was one of the first major successful streaming platforms. When it was first launched in 2011, it was made to attract gamers. Over time, the Twitch team has tried to expand their audience to other groups by including streaming related to music, shows and art. They were bought by Amazon in 2014. They are now known as the largest, most successful platform in the live streaming industry. They get 140 million views each month.
Mixer, another major competitor, was originally known as Beam when they first launched in 2016. They were taken over by Microsoft in 2016, who eventually renamed them Mixer in 2017. They have averaged over 2.6 million visits to their website each month. They are known for having real-time streaming, with no delay from the actual streamer and the viewer’s video. They leveraged their platform by partnering top talent and well-known gamers like Cory “King Gothalion” Michael, Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek and Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. These partnerships have brought a lot of attention to Mixer and expanded their audience.
Facebook Gaming has also caught interest of the market. It is known for having the biggest growth spurt in the industry. Their growth is primarily related to their partnerships with popular gamers Jeremy “DisguiseToast” Wang and “ZeRo.”
The main tactic the other competitors have used to trigger their success involves partnership with the top gamers. Since Caffeine is looking to include other streaming options such as entertainment and sports, it would also be useful to partner with other major influencers to expand their audience and gain more attention.
To see more data on Caffeine TV’s competitors, check out the link below
https://www.statista.com/statistics/189582/age-of-us-video-game-players-since-2010/
The future of live television is at stake and I… it’s just hard to leave that up to Amazon and Facebook.
Ben Keighran via theverge.com
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