Youth entertainment, events and talent agency Amplify is bolstering its gaming offering by signing a number of popular professional online gamers.
Participation in online gaming in Australia has grown by as much as a third in March and April 2020 as more people look for at-home sources of entertainment.
Amplify is Asia-Pacific’s leader in youth events, content and talent management, specialising in finding and building young audiences for brands online.
Amplify director Alex Reid says connecting with popular online gamers is an effective way for brands to reach engaged young audiences.
“We’ve worked with a number of brands including Warner Bros and Samsung who are keen to reach young audiences through the power of gaming” Reid said.
Watching the live streams of professional gamers has become a key source of entertainment for hundreds of thousands of Australians.
The world’s leading live streaming platform for gamers Twitch saw a staggering 1.2 billion hours of content consumed in March 2020. Twitch also experienced a record-breaking 4 million concurrent viewers last month.
Amplify’s head of gaming Nate Bramley said gamers are seeing considerable growth in engagement.
“Some of our talent have reported increases in views of more than 150%. The surge in demand and engagement is very clear.” Bramley said.
With more eyes on gamers than ever before, Amplify has signed a suite of new gaming talent to connect brands with hundreds of thousands of engaged viewers.
“Among our new signs is Twitch streamer Jessie James, known online as GeekGG, as well as Cayinator, SarahJane, and Phizzi. The combined reach of our new gamers is almost 400,000.”
“GeekGG has more than 85,000 followers on Twitch, and has accrued more than 2.4 million views on the platform. Cayinator has more than 220,000 followers and more than 62 million views.” Bramley said.
GeekGG said she had experienced a massive increase in engagement with her community.
“I’ve seen a big boost in viewership while so many people are staying home and isolating. My community is able to watch my streams for longer and outside of their regular viewing times.” Geek GG said.
With most people likely to be staying at home for some time yet, the opportunities for brands to reach audiences through gaming are only going to increase.
Gaming has changed the entertainment landscape in the past few years, and the effects of the pandemic have no doubt accelerated the pace of this digital transformation.