Will Twitch Overtake YouTube And Netflix?

YouTube and Netflix may be the leading players in streaming video, but their dominance could be threatened by Twitch, a live-streaming startup. "I can tell you that Twitch is today the largest live-streaming video site in the world, and it's in the top 10 in every single country, whereas Netflix is not in every single country," Dan Sahar, co-founder and VP of Product Marketing at Qwilt, told Benzinga. Qwilt sells devices (commodity hardware platforms that use Qwilt's software) to network operators. Those devices sit inside of the operator, which allows Qwilt to see what consumers watch. "The rise of Twitch has been remarkable," said Sahar. "It's almost like a freak phenomenon. You have people tuning in to watch somebody play a video game, and they just have massive adoption. I think they grew even faster than Amazon. In some networks we're actually already seeing them in the top five." Related: Amazon Prime Surpasses Hulu, Apple In Video Bandwidth Qwilt's research shows that Twitch is currently the sixth most successful streaming video site in the United States. Sahar said that major events -- such as a battle between the two most successful pro gamers -- create "massive spikes in the network consumption."

Some of those events have resulted in 150,000 simultaneous viewers, which is massive for a live streaming site that caters to one niche market.

"We are seeing live-streaming becoming bigger," Sahar added. "It's taking some time, but this year specifically we have about four or five major live events." Twitch is not the only site that threatens YouTube and Netflix's dominance, however. World Wrestling Entertainment's WWE new WWE Network is quickly becoming one of the hottest properties in streaming video.

More than 600,000 individuals have already signed up. Between the paying users and those who accepted a free trial, the WWE Network immediately entered Qwilt's list of the top 10 video sites. "Both Twitch and WWE are very interesting channels to watch because their growth…has been some of the fastest we have ever seen," said Sahar. Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.