FUTURE OF DIGITAL MARKETING
marketing if it makes sense and they
need to. But we are not in the business of
charging people to produce content. We are
in the business of helping people expose
the great content that they have, and get it
in front of new eyeballs, and more eyeballs
all the time. So if the content is good, that’s
all I care about. I’m not initially bothered
about having an extra dollar to charge them
to have them broadcast, I would rather just
see more great content on the site rather
than charging broadcasters to stream.
So how does the revenue model
work for Twitch?
There’s the common monetisation methods
of subscription revenue, and advertising
revenue, and Twitch gets a cut of each of
those, but so does the broadcaster, and the
broadcaster gets a pretty substantial cut of
that stuff.
How do the demographics of the
average Twitch user differ from
those found on other streaming
platforms such as YouTube, and
how does they compare with
those for iGaming?
We have such a wide variety of people on
our site, so that’s impossible to answer. We
have people who are in their 40s and 50s,
and we have people who are on their early
20s as well, of course. When you have 100
million uniques, it’s going to be a pretty
wide array.
Unibet and PokerStars are the
highest profile poker operators
using the platform at the moment,
reportedly with very positive
results. Can we expect to see lots
of operators join in their wake?
I have the privilege to work with PokerStars
and Unibet. They have both been fantastic
to work with, have both been very
“The community continues to really accept poker as a
game on Twitch, and the poker community has been
absolutely thrilled to have Twitch.”
professional and polite, and have very solid
goals, and like Twitch, came into poker
to help grow the game and help grow the
industry. So our goals are similar. Twitch
isn’t here to try to make a dollar off the
poker world, it’s here to help the poker
world grow again, and boom and thrive,
that’s the goal, so working with them has
been great, and if poker operators would
also like to work with Twitch, the doors are
open, they’ve just got to reach out.
Your CEO reassured the Twitch
community following the Amazon
acquisition that it would be
business as usual. However,
does not being acquired for $1bn
inevitably increase pressure to
monetise from non-core areas,
such as online poker?
I’ve honestly never been pressured by
anyone at Twitch at all, even my boss. To
give you an idea of what I mean, when
Twitch first hired me, I came in the office
on the first day and my boss said: “I love
poker, I enjoy playing poker, it’s fun, I play
some Fridays with friends in a little home
game. But I have no idea how the poker
industry works, I have no idea how the
poker community functions. So, how are
we going to do this. What are you going
to do?”
I had a plan, I had a strategy, and went
through this point by point, and he said,
“OK, just go ahead and do that. Whatever
you think is best. Just do it, and hopefully
it works out.” I literally cannot say I’ve
been pressured a single time to make the
category a little bigger, a little faster. It’s
just been: “Do your thing, we trust you, do
your best, and that’s all that matters to us.”
Thankfully, so far my best has been enough
to make people happy and help the game
grow a little bit, I think. Hopefully, I can
continue to do that. It’s really the ultimate
goal. I am a poker player, and my goal is
to grow and bring new players to the game.
Every time I hear someone talking about
Twitch at an event, often at the table, it just
gives me the chills! It’s such a surreal thing
to hear.
So I would say it’s business as usual as
far as is physically possible. I just do my
best, and they are happy with that.
SCOTT BALL is Poker Partnerships
Lead, Twitch. Scott’s poker career began
in 2010 when he played in the amateur
circuit. During this time he also worked
in the video game industry, including
being an operations manager for Evil
Geniuses and an eSports specialist for
Razer. As his poker skills flourished, he
wanted to find a career that combined
his love of both card and video games.
This led him to Twitch where he landed
a job at the end o