NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
Livestreaming site Panda TV is a new Chinese competitor to Twitch
It is starting to feel like a new site aiming to be the next big thing in livestreaming is launching every week, and while Twitch is still sitting at the top in the gaming world for now, it is seeing more and more contenders entering the arena. First there was the recent launch of Google’s standalone gamer video platform, YouTube Gaming, and now Wang Sicong, the 26-year-old son of China’s wealthiest businessman, is launching a new livestreaming site called Panda TV, which he announced on Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo.
Wang Sicong is apparently best known as the guy who flaunted his wealth by spending $20,000 to buy two rosegold Apple watches for his internet famous dog—I mean come on, man, just one is enough. His father, Wang Jianlin, is the chairman and founder of Dalian Wanda, a multi-billion dollar commercial real estate conglomerate that owns hundred of stores, shopping plazas, and luxury hotels. It is also the parent company of international movie theater chain AMC Theatres.
Panda TV seems to be more than a spontaneous whim for Wang Sicong. In 2011, he purchased the eSports team Catastrophic Cruel Memory and rebranded it as Invictus Gaming (iG), which now competes professionally in tournaments for Dota 2, League of Legends, and StarCraft II. Last year, the team won an $84,360 prize for finishing first in the ESL One Frankfurt Dota 2 championship against North American team Evil Geniuses, the same team that recently made headlines for its $6.6 million win at The International 2015.
There are currently few details available about the structure and features of Panda TV, but with Dalian Wanda’s significant theater and multimedia assets, Wang Sicong has plenty of resources at his disposal to offer a strong competitor to western services like YouTube Gaming and Twitch.
According to South China Morning Post (via GamesBeat), the China is home to over 408 million online gamers that spend $17.6 billion per year, and supposedly over half of those players watch livestreamed game content. That is the kind of market Western companies like Google and Amazon (Twitch’s owner) would kill for, and if Panda TV can capture even a small fraction of that number, it could easily rival its more established competitors.
Photo by fortherock
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