Game Fans’ 30-Hour Binges Show Twitch’s $970 Million Draw
This article is for subscribers only.
Jeffrey Shih and Junho Choi epitomize a video-game subculture that helps explain why Amazon.com Inc. just agreed to spend $970 million on Twitch Interactive Inc.
For seven hours every day, Shih, 27, sits at a computer at his home in the San Francisco Bay Area to broadcast himself playing games such as “Hearthstone” through online forum Twitch. More than 30,000 people tune in to watch him online each day, a number exceeding the capacity of many National Basketball Association arenas.