Media Finance
FOCUS
2020 CONFERENCE
ROUNDUP
PUNCHING UP BUSINESS
The second part of TFM’s recap of the annual Media Finance Focus conference looks at video games, alternative revenue and new consumer habits. BY JANET STILSON
Among the live events Turner Sports held in 2020 before COVID-19 struck was the ELeague FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) Champions Cup Stage III.
Esports’ Unique Propositions TO UNDERSTAND THE UNIQUE WAYS THAT VIDEO GAMES
are interacting with consumers and addressing advertiser needs, look no further than the streaming service Twitch, which is owned by Amazon. “One of the goals of Twitch is to allow conversations to happen between viewers, streamers and the games,” explained Drew Smith, senior strategic development manager at Twitch, during an MFM conference session. Within the company’s toolchest is something called extensions. They involve overlaying information on the screen, which might take the form of polls or statistics about a game. In the case of Borderlands 3, a role-playing shooter game developed by Gearbox Software, the extension on Twitch allows viewers to interact directly with the game and the streamer. “Viewers can enter simple things on their screens,” Smith said. “They don’t need to do anything after that, but it would have some material effect on the game, such as a mini boss that the player would need to fight. “With the innovation that Gearbox put in, on top of the extension
26 The Financial Manager • November/December 2020
tools that we have, we were able to put something together that became truly different,” Smith added. “In comparison with streams where no extensions were active, we saw there was almost double the viewing time on channels that had an extension going,” said Cullen Sweet, formerly of Gearbox. “That’s massive when you consider that the average viewing time for a lot of these people is an hour and a half. Now we were seeing that we captured their attention We saw there was almost for almost three hours.” double the viewing time on Another way of prochannels that had an extension viding interactivity with viewers is to create a “badgoing. That’s massive. ass” creature, and then se— Cullen Sweet, Gearbox lect a lucky viewer to take ownership of it. “Immediately, they would see their name above that creature with the celebrity or influencer’s game,” said Sweet. “The rest of the viewers can then vote on how to make that enemy even stronger, to try to beat the influencer. It’s led to all-around silliness that the influencers enjoyed and the viewers enjoyed,” Sweet said.
