Bloomberg report suggests stats for Twitch's Crown Channel do not line up with the platform's claims to advertisers

Twitch has cemented its place as one of the premier livestreaming platforms in the world. It fields a wide variety of content creators who regularly stream on the platform to thousands of their fans.

In recent years, however, many individuals have challenged some of Twitch's policy decisions. Popular streamer Trainwreckstv has been one of the most prominent critics of the platform, publicly deriding its revenue split and TOS rules.

Notwithstanding the backlash Twitch has received because of its financial decisions over the last few months, a Bloomberg report from two days ago accused the platform of another matter. The report claims that the service has been "exaggerating" the popularity of a channel run by Amazon called the Crown Channel.

The report claims that Twitch may have severely overcounted the channel's active viewers by conflating numbers with "junk" views, which might have misled advertisers.

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Livestreaming, advertisements, and why allegations against Twitch for inflating Crown Channel viewership numbers matter

An active viewer of a livestream is someone who is actively participating in the broadcast, be it via the chatbox or by just watching it. In the context of advertisements and sponsorships, this is a very important figure.

On the flip side are the junk or inactive viewers who are adding to the tally of total views by just having the livestream play in the background without really actively watching it.

The Bloomberg report claims that most of the views on the Crown Channel are of this junk variety because it counts people who watch a livestream in the default mini-player on the home page while browsing the explore section. Case in point, the Candy Crush enigma, where more than 30k people apparently tuned in to watch it despite the platform having no previous audience for it.

The rise of video game streaming on the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform over the years (Image via TwitchTracker)

The burgeoning gaming industry has grown considerably over the years, offering a plethora of new business opportunities. As more and more players try to enter the space, big corporations like Amazon have tried to make inroads into the streaming and content creation side of gaming by acquiring livestreaming platforms.

Even Microsoft, which already had its toes dipped into the industry via Xbox and its affiliated game studies, tried to build a livestreaming platform called Mixer. Despite doing some things right, the platform ultimately shut down, and speculation about its demise has been up for debate for some time.

Average concurrent viewership over the years (Image via Twitch Tracker)

Regardless, what drives most of streaming and gaming content creation is advertisements and sponsorships. Enthusiasts and fans of streamers regularly tune in to websites such as Twitch, driving substantial traffic to attract the biggest of advertisers. Twitch Tracker notes that over the last couple of years, there have been approximately 2.5 million unique users on the website at any given moment.

Readers should note that the Crown Channel, run and owned by Amazon itself, is aimed at capturing this very vast market, which is otherwise dominated by popular streamers.

A tweet from Cecilia D'Anastasio, one of the reporters of the Bloomberg article, succinctly sums up the issue:

"Amazon's Crown channel's inflated viewership has repercussions for advertisers, who have been pitched on sponsorship packages for between $150,000 and $500,000, documents show."

If true, the conflated numbers might have been the deciding factor for many sponsors, such as Intel and Progressive.

Here are some Twitter reactions to the report:

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