Amazon Twitch.tv should get ready to face its upcoming tough competitor - China's Panda TV. Panda TV is an e-sports streaming service that will go in a direct competition with Amazon Twitch.tv as revealed this week.
Twitch was acquired by Amazon in September of last year for $970 million and is the largely popular live-streaming video platform for gamers. The service has more than 1.5 million broadcasters and is already increasing its visibility in Taiwan proving its interest in Chinese viewership.
But Twitch should also be wary of Panda TV as it will make its grand entrance and change the way of online gaming and video streaming sooner or later.
Wang Sicong will be the chief executive of Panda TV which is an online entertainment company that focuses on broadcasting live e-sports events as reported by the microblogging service Weibo. He is the son of the richest man in China, Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group. He is the chairman of the private investment firm Prometheus Capital and an outspoken as well as a popular social media celebrity in China.
The younger Wang bought the pro-gaming team in 2011, previously known as Catastrophic Cruel Memory (CCM), now Invictus Gaming (iG), for about US$6 million in order to promote e-sports in China. He draw attention earlier this year when he bought his Siberian Husky dog named Wang Bichi, two gold Apple Watches.
Numbers of core members of famous e-sports teams from overseas and Chinese will participate as Panda TV anchors and hosts according to QQ Tech.
About 408 million online gamers in China, spend a combined 114 billion yuan ($17.6 billion) yearly. Approximately 56% watch live-streamed gaming content, according to a local media.
As for the possible domain, it will be one of the three options: panda.tv, pandatv.com, or xiongmao.tv (xiongmao means panda). The club is going to be sponsored by Logitech, maker of computer accessories and PC vendor Asus. iG has teams that compete in Defence of the Ancients (DotA), League of Legends, Crossfire and Starcraft II.
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