SAN FRANCISCO, May 12 — Two live streaming sites have joined forces to form Smashcast, what they call the world’s largest independent eSports broadcaster outside Asia.
After game-streaming site Azubu bought up Hitbox in January 2017, the two services have combined as Smashcast.
Orienting itself towards the competitive eSports community, Smashcast is launching via its dedicated website smashcast.tv and through mobile apps for the iOS and Android operating systems.
Hitbox co-founder and CEO Martin Klimscha is now European Managing Director, putting him in close proximity to the rebranded company’s 4K and VR content production facility in Vienna.
That studio is “a key next step for us in ensuring the quality of support we provide our broadcasting and publishing partners,” he said.
“We wanted specifically to ensure that we are differentiated from our competitors not only from our platform and technology excellence, which includes full 4K and 360 VR support, but from the quality of streaming content as well.”
Which competitors? Well, Smashcast goes so far as to name Amazon-owned Twitch as the platform it thinks it won’t surpass—becoming “a strong #2 competitor to Twitch” is its stated ambition.
And despite the name recognition of Twitch and Google’s own YouTube (whose YouTube Gaming spinoff supports live streaming) in European and North American spheres, Asia has a number of extremely well established video and video game streaming services including Afreeca, YY, Douyu and Zhanqi.
Smashcast says its home advantage lies in combining low-cost technical and service infrastructure with a wider approach to revenue creation.
It cites affiliate marketing, interactive sponsor-based advertising, virtual goods sales, sponsorships and in-game betting as viable methods in bringing eSports up to speed with traditional sporting businesses in addition to the usual game streaming sites’ trifecta of advertising, subscriptions and donations.
