FX.co ★ YouTube to purchase Twitch for $1 bln

YouTube, the No. 1 platform for internet video, has reached a preliminary deal to buy Twitch, a popular videogame-streaming company. The communique reveals that the deal is worth $1 billion. The U.S. corporation YouTube was acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Now, YouTube is ready to pay $1 billion for eSports streaming portal Twitch. The Twitch purchase will be the most costly deal for the YouTube management. Meanwhile, both companies expect the U.S. Justice Department to take a hard look at whether buying Twitch raises anticompetitive issues in the online-video market. The regulator’s verdict will determine the deal execution. The specifics of the acquisition have been already settled. Reps for YouTube and Twitch declined to comment. The official announcement is expected to be made imminently. For the reference, nowadays San Francisco-based Twitch is one of the first websites to host livestreaming user-generated video. It was launched in 2011. The company claims to have more than 45 million monthly users, with more than 1 million members who upload videos each month. Numerous video games producers use Twitch for unofficial presentations of new games. For example, Microsoft channel showed a trial game on Xbox 360 which was put on sale by World of Tanks later.