Tech

Gamers gobble a glut of bandwith with their Twitch-y new pastime

What’s the biggest spectator sport on the Web? Guys watching other guys play video games.

Twitch.tv, which broadcasts gamers and their video-game prowess around the globe, has become the biggest bandwidth hog in the live-streaming space, according to new data.

In fact, the new pastime of watching strangers play hot games like “Minecraft,” “Call of Duty” and “Titanfall” is far and away the nation’s data Goliath, driving more traffic than live videos of the national pastime and WWE wrestling matches combined, according to Qwilt, which tracks broadband usage.

Twitch currently accounts for 43.6 percent of all live streaming traffic, compared with 17.7 percent for No. 2 WWE.

Popular sporting sites MLB.com and ESPN ranked fourth and fifth, while news sites CNN.com and NBCNews.com came in at No. 9 and 10, according to Qwilt.

The game-content upstart’s newfound dominance in the live-streaming world came out of “nowhere,” said Mark Fisher, vice president at Qwilt, which sells software to help Internet service providers manage their video traffic.

Twitch “wasn’t even on [our] radar” last year, Fisher said.

A huge driver of the growth can be tied to new streaming functions built in to Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s XBox One. Anyone with a gaming console stream can now live-stream a video of themselves playing the latest title.

San Francisco-based Twitch currently boasts more than 1 million unique broadcasters a month, up from 600,000 last year and 300,000 in 2012. The 3-year-old company also has more than doubled its viewership, to 45 million from 20 million in 2012.

Of course, Twitch still has a long way to go to become the next Netflix.

When looking at the entire universe of video streaming — not just live — Twitch ranks fifth in the US, with a volume of 1.5 percent.
By comparison, No. 1 Netflix represents 57 percent of all streaming traffic.

Also, Twitch doesn’t dominate the world of Web videos by all measures. According to Web data tracker comScore, Twitch Interactive, which owns Twitch.tv, ranked 69th overall among US video properties based on unique video viewers. In terms of videos viewed, it came in at No. 29.

For its part, Qwilt argues that volume — or broadband consumption — is a better overall measure of popularity than clicks or views.
Twitch’s expansion plans include making its streaming service more accessible on smartphones and other mobile devices, said Stewart Alsop, an investor in and director of Twitch.tv.

“The game is shifting to mobile, and that’s the thing that company is working hard on,” Alsop told The Post.