Amazon's video game
streaming site Twitch is about to have another competitor, VentureBeat reports,
just a few months after news broke that Google is launching a dedicated YouTube
Gaming site and mobile app.
Chinese social media
celebrity and businessman Wang Sicong, who shelled out $24,000 (£15,000) on
rose gold Apple Watches for his two dogs, is launching a live-streaming video
platform called Panda
Amazon spent $970
million (£629 million) last year to acquire Twitch, far and away the leading
site for live-broadcasted video games. It is already trying to boost its
presence in Taiwan, meaning it's likely to be interested in the 408 million
online gamers in China, half of which also watch live-streaming content,
according to the South China Morning Post.
Wang Sicong is the son
of China's richest man Wang Jianlin, chairman of Chinese conglomerate Dalian
Wanda. The 26-year-old Sicong is a director at the family-owned firm, which is
the country's largest private property developer. It is also China's biggest cinema
chain operator, owning AMC Entertainment and Wanda Entertainment.
Sicong announced on
Chinese social network Weibo over the weekend that he would be chief executive
of a new game-streaming site called Panda TV, which according to Chinese
publication QQ Tech was registered as a business in July. Sicong didn't share
an exact date for the launch of the service, though.
Wang Sicong has his own
professional online-gaming team, and in an interview with the BBC he explained
why the hobby was so popular in China: It allows people to escape that system.
VentureBeat pulled some
more information on Wang Sicong's gaming past to date from the South China
Morning Post:
In 2011, Wang bought
the pro-gaming team formerly known as Catastrophic Cruel Memory (CCM), now
Invictus Gaming (iG), for about $6 million in order to promote e-sports in
China… The club is sponsored by computer accessories maker Logitech and PC
vendor Asus. iG has teams competing in Defence of the Ancients (DotA) 2, League
of Legends, Crossfire and StarCraft II.
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