YouTube Just Revealed Its Plan To Crush Twitch
YouTube is continuing its quest to pull streamers away from Twitch today, rolling out an expansion to its sponsorship program. Up until now, YouTube sponsorships had been available to a select number of users in a limited beta, but beginning today, they'll be available to a lot more content creators who run gaming channels.
If you've spent any significant time on Twitch, then YouTube sponsorships will probably seem pretty familiar to you. That's because they share a lot in common with Twitch subscriptions, as both allow viewers to pay $4.99 per month to support the streamer. Just like Twitch subscriptions, YouTube sponsors will receive a special badge next to their name when they participate in chat, and YouTube creators can offer a certain number of special emotes to their sponsors.
Gamers who broadcast on YouTube will have the option of turning on sponsor-only mode in their chat, and taking things one step further, sponsors will also be immune when streamers turn on slow mode. If you're keeping track, those are two features also offered to Twitch Subscribers, so YouTube is definitely take a page out of Twitch's book here. What's that they say about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery?
Joking aside, it's little surprise that YouTube's sponsorship program borrows so much from Twitch subscriptions. The subscription platform Twitch uses has worked astoundingly well, so what's the point in trying to tweak it? Indeed, $4.99 definitely seems to be a sweet spot, and assuming YouTube Gaming takes off in the way Twitch has, those sponsorships should make Google a decent chunk of change.
In any case, sponsorships are available to streamers who meet Google and YouTube's requirements. You can read the full list of requirements here, but a few that standout include the fact that your channel must be a gaming-focused one, you must have more than 1,000 subscribers, and that your channel must have streaming enabled (obviously). Assuming you meet those requirements, you can sign up to begin accepting sponsorships through YouTube's features page.