Amazon: Not an E-commerce Company
Amazon: Not an E-commerce Company
Let’s start with the premise that Twitch, the video-game watching network, is the next ESPN – you know, the jewel in Disney’s crown that, by itself, is worth $50.8 billion . Like ESPN, Twitch is about live competition, and, like ESPN, Twitch does exceptionally well in the highly desirable young male demographic. 1 Obviously this is the best possible outcome, far-fetched though it may sound. It is certainly an outcome that would make Amazon’s purchase of Twitch for $970 million an amazing deal. It would not, however, have anything to do with e-commerce.
Just a few weeks ago I wrote in Losing my Amazon Religion about Amazon’s focus on Prime Video in particular:
It’s this focus on original and exclusive content – and devices that deliver it – that concerns me, and not because it’s expensive. Rather, what exactly does this have to do with e-commerce?
Needless to say, the Twitch acquisition hasn’t exactly quelled my concerns. It has, though, led me to question my premise; if Amazon is behaving, shall we say, erratically, the issue is perhaps not with Amazon but with my understanding of the company. So I went back and reread the origin story of Amazon in Brad Stone’s excellent The Everything Store :
[John] Doerr’s optimism about the Web mixed with Bezos’s own bullish fervor and sparked an explosion of ambitions and expansion plans. Bezos was going to do more than establish an online bookstore; now he was set on building one of the first lasting Internet companies.
Over the following pages Stone documents how Amazon expanded from books to music and then to DVDs. These categories, along with packaged software (including games) eventually made up the “Media” category in Amazon’s earnings. Today this media category is about 25% of Amazon’s revenue, but, according to my understanding, almost all of Amazon’s “profits.” Said profits are reinvested into all the other parts of Amazon’s business, but, it must be asked, to what ends? Is Amazon really an e-commerce company? Or are they a company bent on dominating the world?
Returning to Twitch, I can think of three possible reasons for Amazon’s purchase:
- Amazon is looking to buttress their media business – That Media business that underpins the Amazon machine is not in the best of shape; traditional media forms are going away, and, except for books, Amazon does not have a ready-made replacement from a revenue standpoint. In this view, Twitch offers a new revenue model (ads, primarily, although there are also premium subscriptions) that can help fill this gap.
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