Archive for YouTube

YouTube Gaming launched last Wednesday and after nearly a week of observations, the Google powered streaming service has left several big impressions. Before fully diving into the details, it should be noted that YTG represents the first real challenger (sorry, Major League Gaming TV) to the currently undisputed streaming service of Twitch.TV. Last year Amazon purchased Twitch after Google reportedly backed out despite tentatively agreeing to a price tag upwards of $1 billion. Amazon ended up paying approximately $970 million to acquire Twitch, representing an investment — and presumably a belief — in the continued success of streaming esports and video games.

Other than huge difference in viewership numbers, something not particularly unexpected given YTG is still in its infancy, there are some differences in the layout and execution of the two platforms. For the duration of this look-in, YTG will be on the left-hand side with Twitch being on the right. Pictured below is the same moment (as close as I could get) in a StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void beta game between two pairs of professional players that has been paused. The screenshot was a VOD (Video On Demand) rather than live as I couldn’t quite grab the right timing during each live broadcast. The match up took place at Red Bull Battlegrounds, something YTG labels in the upper left whereas Twitch does not during a full screen pause.

It isn’t a deal making feature for YouTube, however it is a nice feature that normal YouTube videos have that has carried over to the streaming side of things. Another big chip in YTG’s favor is their pausing the VODs. YouTube grants the ability to navigate away from a specific spot in a video and being able to hit the back button and go right to where the video was paused. Twitch on the other will send you back to the beginning of the VOD rather than save a spot. For anyone who’s ever played a video game for more than a few minutes, misclicks or the wrong hotkey being hit are bound to happen, so this pause-and-return feature is another great feature from standard YouTube.

The game search options for both options each leave much to be desired as both sport autocomplete options, but neither are particularly great.

After clicking the game, in this case Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Twitch welcomes you to a page featuring the top streams rated by current viewership sortable by specific maps. This is a big contrast from the generic YouTube landing page where it shows a video from a year ago as its top result and zero live streams. After browsing the various YTG videos, most turned out to be previously uploaded videos rather than live stream VODs. As it gains a more extensive VOD library I expect this to change, but it’s somewhat surprising to see two of the top six YTG search results be from more than four months ago.

Another issue I routinely saw with YouTube that I’m willing to chalk up to it still being new is the lack of moderators for the stream chats. Of the two dozen or so YTG streams I was in, the chat was running rampant with a mix of memes, ASCII characters and the like. Obviously Twitch chat is nothing to brag about, but at least a majority of the ridiculous fluff was removed by mods in the Twitch channels I frequent. To be honest, my friends have nicknamed Twitch chat — and by extension most stream chats — as YouTube comments in real time, something that is not a compliment to anyone who has delved into the depths of said comments.

Despite the flaws, I remain optimistic YouTube Gaming will get up to speed and soon give Twitch a real live streaming threat in the esports realm. As someone who has dealt with streaming issues since Justin.TV and an esports fan who grows weary of Twitch issues — specifically video stuttering or freezing and frame-rate drops despite a strong internet connection and computer — hopefully the competition YTG brings to the table will bring out the best in themselves and in Twitch, resulting in the best possible outcomes for the users. While I remain unimpressed with YouTube Gaming at the moment, I’m eager to see what the coming months brings for their viewer options. I can’t see this becoming Google Glass or Google+; this is one project that seems incredibly likely to succeed if for no other reason than that the market and demand is already in place.

After representing Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings films, New Zealand is once again the epicenter for fantasy and hopes sprung to life. Yesterday, YouTube secured broadcasting rights to the Bundesliga and will begin showing its soccer matches on Friday in real time from Germany. Time zone differences will be awfully tough on the Kiwis as a 2:30 Friday afternoon game goes live at 12:30 am in New Zealand. Ruined sleep patterns aside, merely seeing Google take live streaming so seriously could open up a new competition for sports broadcasting rights.

The Latest_Bundesliga Twitter account was among the first to break the cord cutter friendly news:

YouTube wird Partner der #Bundesliga und sichert sich die Rechte zur Live-Übertragung der Freitagsspiele – in Neuseeland.

— Bundesliga Latest (@BL_Latest) August 17, 2015

Sports Business Daily (subscription required) noted YouTube — and by extension Google — is also allowed to show additional games and highlights from the league, but as replays and not live.

YouTube previously streamed the opening match of Bundesliga season here in the United States, a matchup between three-time reigning champ Bayern Munich and Hamburg last Friday. With Fox Soccer owning the broadcast rights here, the game was streamed via their soccer page.

It’s hard to imagine YouTube not being interesting in the broadcast world, as they’ve been in the live streaming business for some time now, really kicking things off with their stream of the 2012 London Olympics. With events ranging from traditional sports to extreme and esports, as well as general content creators also getting in on the live broadcast game, YouTube already has a massive user base, huge infrastructure behind it, as well as name recognition and familiarity.

Further emphasis has been placed on YT’s trend of embracing esports as they streamed Dota 2’s largest yearly tournament, The International 5. At TI5, 16 qualified teams from around the world competed for a prize pool of over $18.4 million, with more than $6.6 million going to the winning team. Factor in the soon to be released YouTube Gaming platform, an aptly named area specifically for the broadcast of esports, speed runs, Let’s plays and more, clearly Google has taken a keen interest in bringing live content to people. Google securing the rights in New Zealand with their ~5 million residents could be a guinea pig or stepping stone of sorts for bigger things on the horizon here in the US. According to their second quarter 2015 report, Google increased revenue to $17.7 billion and revenue growth of 11 percent year-over-year. Ruth Porat, Google CFO commented on the revenue, specifically noting YouTube, said:

Our strong Q2 results reflect continued growth across the breadth of our products, most notably core search, where mobile stood out, as well as YouTube and programmatic advertising. We are focused every day on developing big new opportunities across a wide range of businesses. We will do so with great care regarding resource allocation.

Unfortunately it’s impossible to distinctly separate YouTube’s revenue stream from Google’s numerous other ventures, however it isn’t hard to imagine YouTube comparing similarly to traditional networks. Given that other broadcasting network reports don’t separate their revenue streams channel by channel, these numbers for sports networks should be taken with a grain of salt. CBS’s Q2 2015 report disclosed a $3.2 billion, increasing 1 percent compared to last year. Disney, owners of sports giants ESPN and ABC amongst other channels, reported Q2 earnings at $2.1 billion this season. Time Warner, controllers of TNT, and TBS et al. posted $7.3 billion, up 8 percent compared to 2014.

With plenty of money, a desired market for more streamed sports and clear goals moving towards streaming live broadcasts, Google and YouTube could once again transform the way the every person consumes their favorite sports, news and other media.

For all of the various competitions getting streamed via TwitchTV, it is unfortunate to see the platform itself does not have any major competition. Yes, ESPN3 has shown esports in the past, Major League Gaming TV is making strides, and Azubu is still a thing, but without another titan to battle, TwitchTV holds all the cards as streaming’s primary go-to website. Cue the whispers of YouTube preparing to re-launch a gaming centered live-streaming platform in this Daily Dot piece.

The rumor mill has an acute sense of things given the recent Twitch password issues. While it isn’t on the same scale as Sony storing user passwords in plain text, on Tuesday certain TwitchTV users were hit with the a concerning email. A subject line of “Important Notice about Your Twitch Account” immediately caught the eye of channel owners as the body of the email revealed that unauthorized access within accounts may have taken place:

As a relatively long-time Twitch user — my account registration is dated January 1, 2012 and the company officially split from JustinTV in June of 2011 — I can even remember the JustinTV days and the issues that have hampered the streaming platform back then. From out of sync audio and video to levels of lag that turned videos into slideshows, Twitch seems to take one step forward and two steps back in terms of being the best available. Now offering the ability to at least report issues on hand with a few simple clicks, Twitch has nonetheless introduced other problems.

From a sub-par VOD catalogue that lacks a basic search function to their music policy that causes large areas of previous VOD’s getting muted (as indicated by the warning and large red bars), many — myself included — have expressed frustration with the platform.

Hopes are high that a rival service will end with the companies bringing out the best in each other for the consumers. Google previously showed interest in purchasing the Twitch platform before backing out, but if you can’t join em, beat em.

(Special thanks to the GSL and TakeTV channels)

Earlier this week heavyweight boxing legend Mike Tyson uploaded a YouTube clip to his channel with a caption that read, “Help me pick my 10 best knockouts to feature in the Mike Tyson story starring Jamie Foxx and directed by Martin Scorcese.”

Whether you’re a fan of the big fight knockouts Tyson served on Michael Spinks and Larry Holmes, or his early career beat downs on the lower rungs of professional boxing as an 18-year-old phenom, they are all there in over 57 minutes of punishing fury.

This clip adds more credence to Jamie Foxx’s announcement on the Breakfast Club Power 105.1 radio show last week that he will be starring in a biopic about Tyson, directed by Martin Scorcese and written by Terence Winter, who created  Boardwalk Empire and wrote the screenplay for Wolf of Wall Street. Scorcese’s last boxing film was Raging Bull, for which Robert DeNiro won the Best Actor Oscar in 1980.

Foxx said in the interview, “I just went in with Paramount with Mike Tyson. So I’m going to do the Mike Tyson story. Listen, to be in the same room pitching Mike Tyson to Paramount, Mike Tyson is on one side, I’m on the other side and doing Mike Tyson at the same time. And Martin Scorsese at the helm. This will be the first boxing movie that Martin Scorsese has done since Raging Bull.”

If Tyson is sincere about using the web to crowdsource his best knockouts, YouTube sure is an interesting community to select, as their commenters generally leave a lot to be desired.

However, the video has already eclipsed over one million views in just a few days, which adds support to the viability of the project. A film montage of Tyson knockouts would be one of the best ever, yet entirely unlikely to eclipse the best of all time — Push It To The Limit from Scarface.

(Header Image via Wikpedia)

The network powers that be — CBS, TNT, truTV and TBS — have created an official YouTube channel in preparation for March Madness. By subscribing to the channel you can receive email updates on new content ranging from highlights, best moments and more.

Right now the channel has videos from last year, though according to the press release it will feature highlights and clips from all 67 games this year. Specifically it says real-time highlights and video recaps, though unfortunately the games themselves will not be streamed. The live coverage will only consist of analysis and post-game press conferences and is not related to CBS’ current All Access subscription service.

Vice president of business operations for Turner Sports, Mark Johnson is encouraged by this new foray into the YouTube realm.

“Our new partnership with YouTube gives college basketball fans more ways to discover and watch the plays and storylines that everyone will be talking about during March Madness. Tapping into the power and reach of YouTube’s video platform opens up new opportunities for us to grow interest and consumption of March Madness.”

Given the lucrative TV ad revenue, it is no surprise the governing powers would want to rock the cash boat. Via Statista, in both 2013 and 2014 the revenue surpassed the $1 billion mark.

No surprise the NCAA and the broadcast partners wouldn’t be eager to ditch that sort of money and go to streaming option where things like Ad Block Plus can remove advertisements. This channel may be a step in the right direction with limited live coverage, but cord cutters will still be forced to look elsewhere for the games.

(Header image via truTV)

According to CNBC, YouTube could be on the brink of a major makeover for companies and content creators. The service would offer a subscription price to eliminate advertisements in videos. Google — which bought out YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 — has been experimenting with a subscription based revenue model since 2013, though now it seems the service will launch full-scale in a matter of months.

The ad-free experimental model, starting as low as $0.99 per month, currently features partnerships with National Geographic, PGA, UFC and 26 other channels. After two months the service wasn’t quite what some hoped, at least according to National Geographic’s senior vice president of global strategy. On top of the channels and content, YouTube is also launching their Music Key service in order to bring ad-free content specifically to music videos.

As more and more people are finding ways around the pre-roll and in-video ads — the Ad Block Plus Chrome extension claims over 50 million users — it will be curious to see what demographic this new YouTube service is aimed at. As someone who has cut the cord, I rely on streaming services for information, entertainment and the like. While I turn off ABP for certain websites and for Twitch.TV, for the vast majority of my computer based browsing, I leave it on.

The sheer volume of content on YouTube is staggering: over one billion active users upload 300 hours of content is uploaded every minute. Despite sporting an impressive 50% advert revenue going back to the partners on YouTube, this new subscription-based model for generating revenue could be the cure for people like myself who use third-party options to avoid ads. I certainly can’t speak for everyone using ABP or a similar service, but advertisements are a matter of being an inconvenience and for me, just being impatient.

I for one, welcome our new subscription based YouTube overlords.

(Header image via YouTube)

Burgeoning digital sports network Whistle Sports announced they closed their Series B round of funding, raising $28 million led by Emil Capital Partners and featuring prominent athletes like Derek Jeter and Peyton Manning as investors.

The network launched in January 2014 and has experienced tremendous growth in only a year, with close to 13 million YouTube subscribers, while gaining 10 million new social followers across their platforms each month. The next closest sports YouTube channel is the NBA at close to six million subscribers.

Their most popular YouTube channel partner is Dude Perfect, the group of Texas A&M alums who got their start making ridiculous basketball trick shots. They have also begun forming content partnerships with professional athletes like Jeremy Lin.

The network’s revenue has been more than doubling each quarter and their videos have been viewed over two billion times. This can be attributed in part to the network’s popularity with the much sought after demographic for advertisers—young males (78 percent of their viewers are male).

Along with pro athlete content partnerships, Whistle Sports has partnered with nearly all major pro sports franchises, including the NFL, MLB, PGA Tour, and NASCAR. In an interview with Forbes, John West, the CEO of Whistle Sports, described the companies relationship with sports leagues, saying, “Each is a true partnership, in which they give us access to their libraries that we use to co-create content, and then we distribute that content on our platforms as well as theirs. Why did they all choose to partner with us? They’re losing young viewers and they have to adapt and evolve—we’re the vehicle to make that happen.”

With nearly 40 percent of their viewers from outside the US, the company has recently opened an office in London and is planning opening another in Latin America this year.

Given their amazing growth and plans to go international, Whistle Sports is now a giant in the digital media space, building in one year what took others like VICE years to do.

(Photo by George Bush Presidential Library and Museum via Flickr)