Could Tencent's Trovo Be Twitch's New Rival Now That Mixer Is Gone?

Microsoft's livestreaming platform Mixer is shutting down, and it was one of Twitch's prominent rivals. However, there's another rival that is trying to compete with the world-renowned livestreaming platform.

Bloomberg has reported that Tencent has been dipping its toes with its own livestreaming platform Trovo live in the United States since this March.

Tencent has its fingers in numerous gaming related companies, such as Riot Games, Ubisoft, and Activision Blizzard.

Tencent And Its Livestreaming Platform, Trovo

A few years ago, Tencent dove into the livestreaming trend when it invested in Huya and Douyu, which are Chinese servces. The company bought a controlling stake in Huya this April, and it had an eGame service of its own.

Now the company is jumping into the United States. Trovo states in its terms of service that the livestreaming service is affiliated with Tencent, and the contact address they list down is identical to the United States headquarters of Tencent. Think of this however you want to think of it.

If you look at the Trovo website, it will look similar to Twitch's site since it has a practically identical design. To stream on Trovo, you'll need to use a third-party desktop or mobile broadcasting app.

The viewership on Trovo is drastically unpopulated compared to Twitch. The most viewers on the top channel on Trovo was at 255 people watching that channel. On Twitch at the same time, the biggest livestream, which was a Counter Strike: Global Offensive, had over a hundred thousand viewers.

Trovo's Fortnite section had 222 viewers at the same time as Twitch's Fortnite section having 262,000 viewers. Trovo is clearly not close to rivaling Twitch. However, it seems that Tencent is ready to invest in luring in content creators to its livestreaming platform.

How Is Trovo Planning To Gain Traction?

The Creator Partnership Program was revealed by Trovo recently. It will open up in July and it will pay content creators $30 million over the next year and a half. If the streamer has more than 50 followers and their broadcasts are high-quality, then they can apply to the Trovo 500 program.

Several elite streamers can earn over $5,000 a month via the Creator Partnership Progam, and those at the bottom tier of the program will earn at least $600. Similar to Twitch, streamers can earn income by having digital reward points called Elixir that's like Twitch's Bits, and there are also paid subscriptions.

Streamers from Twitch, Mixer, and YouTube have already moved over to Trovo. The closing of Mixer was somewhat of an opportunity for Tencent with Trovo. Microsoft is working with Facebook Gaming to help Mixer's streamers move to Facebook's livestreaming platform so they can continue seamlessly.

However, most people that are moving away from Mixer are heading to Twitch. The two most famous streamers of Mixer haven't made their future decisions clear. Microsoft spend millions of dollars to get two popular ex-Twitch streamers Ninja and Shroud out of Twitch and into Mixer on exclusive contracts.

Was Tencent with Trovo willing to give out millions of dollars to the two big streamers and their large fanbases. While those two streamers didn't get as popular on Trovo as they were on Twitch, they are still the biggest streamers that Trovo can lure to its service to gain more attention.

In conclusion, it's too early to determine whether Trovo is a competitor to Twitch in the long-term, but it is possible even if only slightly. Tencent with Trovo is willing to spend the money needed to reward its streamers. However, it's unclear if the gaming community will warm up to Trovo.