Amazon purchases Twitch TV for almost $1 billion

Amazon has purchased Twitch TV for almost $1 billion, it was confirmed yesterday.

News of the deal began to break last night but remained unconfirmed by both Twitch TV and Amazon, Inc but a few hours later both companies made an official announcement.

The online-retail giant bought Twitch Interactive, which runs Twitch TV, for a confirmed $970 million.

Twitch TV, a streaming website for gaming, launched in 2011 and has become incredibly successful, with more than 55 million unique visitors and 15 billion minutes of content produced by over 1 million broadcasters

“Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of game each month – from The International, to breaking the world record for Mario, to gaming conferences like E3. And amazingly Twitch is only three years old,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.

“Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community.”

Twitch CEO Emmett Shear added: “Amazon and Twitch optimize for our customers first and are both believers in the future of gaming. Being part of Amazon will let us do even more for our community.

“We will be able to create tools and services faster than we could have independently. This change will mean great thing for our community, and will let us bring Twitch to even more people around the world.”

The deal will close before the end of 2014.