Author: emersonriback

Washington Post to Start Twitch Channel

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Old media’s hunt for new audiences continues, as Digiday reports that the Washington Post will launch two shows this week.

Digiday: “One is live news coverage hosted by video reporter Libby Casey, starting July 16 with a livestream covering President Trump’s meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, with the frequency to be determined by the news cycle. The other is a series starting July 19 called ‘Playing Games with Politicians’ where political reporter David Weigel will interview prominent politicians (Rep. Matt Gaetz, Sen. Corey Booker and Rep. Suzan DelBene are confirmed for the first season) while they play video games.”

As the post notes, Twitch is owned by Amazon, whose CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

The post continues: “The Post had been watching Twitch for a while because it has a big, untapped video audience. Per the platform, it has 15 million daily active users and it reportedly has 1 million views at any given time… Its decision to launch a channel was validated when it broadcast Mark Zuckerberg’s hearings on Capitol Hill in April and got 380,000 viewers the first day and 1.5 million views in all on its top clip that day. For comparison’s sake, the top channel on Twitch Friday afternoon was Fortnite, with just over 200,000 live views.”

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How eSports Video Stars — ‘Host, Casters and Analysts’ — Are Born

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CNET explains “How esports stars broke into the Dota 2 scene.”

Says self-described “professional idiot” Jake “SirActionSlacks” Kanner: “A lot of people tell me, oh you know, he’s got this act and it’s so good but it’s really different kind of intelligences I guess? I’m pretty stupid in a lot of ways — I can’t spell, I can’t pronounce words correctly. It’s less of an act, it’d be nice if it was an act.”

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Tencent Boosts Mobile eSports with $500K Purse

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Engadget: “Mobile eSports are becoming a big deal. Last year, mobile MOBA Vainglory’s big eSports tournament was backed by Amazon. Supercell put on a Clash Royale $1 million tournament last summer, too. Now China’s Tencent Games is getting in on the action with plans for a series of eSport tournaments, beginning with the Arena of Valor World Cup in July of this year. The contest will take place in Los Angeles and offer a prize pool of more than $500,000, according to the press release.”

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Georgia College Creates eSports Team

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41NBC/WMGT reports: “Georgia College is embracing what the school says could be the future of collegiate sports, creating an esports team that plays against other schools in an NCAA conference.”

‘This could be an area of growth when it comes to collegiate sports so we wanted to be a bit more involved,’ Georgia College’s Assistant Athletic Director Al Weston said.”

“’I don’t know what I’m looking at because I don’t know the game but I can kind of get an idea of what goes into all that kind of stuff,’ Weston said. ‘[The team] practices, they do scrimmages and they’re really putting their all into representing Georgia College.’”