Why F1 is heading to Twitch

Formula 1's decision to live-stream the Mexican Grand Prix in six countries using online game-streaming platform Twitch took many by surprise. If you thought free-to-air versus pay-TV was the main broadcast battleground, things are more complicated.

Twitch was founded in 2007 by four friends, including 24-year-old Justin Kan, who attached a camera to his head and live-streamed his life for the next eight months. You read that right.

Justin.tv, Twitch's predecessor, was the result. It gave birth to a multi-channel online platform enabling viewers to enjoy content focused on technology, sport, news and gaming. In no time 
at all, the gaming channels attracted large numbers of viewers rushing to watch those who were brilliant at it - brilliantly good, bad or funny, but always entertaining.

Our camera-headed friend and his business partners sold the company seven years later to Amazon for $970million. For anyone who found Kan's head-cam antics mad, it is easy to see who got the last laugh.

Today, Twitch boasts more than 15 million active users each day, with over a million online at any point in time. They watch content provided by over two million broadcasters across 27,000 partner channels. If, like me, you grew up with three-channel TV, this takes some getting used to.

Darren Cox, president and CEO of Canadian company Torque Esports, knows a thing or two about the gaming-to-racing landscape and the appeal of Twitch. Having played a pivotal role in steering the GT Academy initiative between Nismo and the famous Gran Turismo game, he now runs the World's Fastest Gamer. This is a competition that offers a real-world racing programme valued at $1 million to the winner.

"Streaming F1 on Twitch was something F1's owners needed to do," says Cox. "Liberty is a US company with a US bias, and they know the success other sports such as NFL and NBA have had with Twitch. If they can square the circle by working with traditional free-to-air and pay-TV broadcasters, it's the right way to open the sport to younger audiences."

One of Torque Esport's subsidiaries, Stream Hatchet, provides data analysis of those accessing live streams, and Cox confirms that F1's initial foray onto Twitch produced some fascinating insights.

"Considering younger audiences are often labelled as having short attention spans, we can see that 26% of those who watched Mexico stayed for more than 30 minutes, and 19% for more than an hour," Cox adds. "The people who watched it actually stayed. Looking at this kind of data is hugely interesting to F1 and its sponsors."

The F1 channel on Twitch has almost 43,000 followers, due to the success of F1's official Esports series. Those who tuned in to watch the live stream from Mexico could enjoy the 'co-streaming' - commentary and chat - of influencers including German gaming cohort 'PietSmiet'. They have no fewer than 2.4 million subscribers on their dedicated YouTube channel.

With F1 streaming the live race feed, the opportunity to offer personalised content, and choose the community you want to engage with during the race, is one of the intriguing opportunities Twitch can offer. In a world of oh-so-serious commentary about compounds, engine modes and upgrades, perhaps an engaging, interactive and brilliantly funny livestream might just be a winner, whatever your age.