Twitch Prime has improved overall viewership by 13 percent

Although you might expect that announcing a paying option for a service wouldn't exactly drive people to sign up, that's exactly what's happened with Amazon's gaming stream service, Twitch. After the announcement of Twitch Prime, concurrent viewer numbers have gone up by as much as 13 percent over the ensuing month.

Twitch Prime is a service introduced at the beginning of October, which gives Amazon Prime members a few added benefits on the streaming service. It means there's no adverts, new emoticons to use in the chat and the chance to freely subscribe to a channel once a month. It's not a life changing thing, but gives people even more reason to become Prime Members.

In its first 9 days, Twitch Prime has boosted viewership. Let's see how long this lasts.

via @_SuperData @twitch $AMZN #twitchprime pic.twitter.com/uRX2HX1zLD

— SuperJoost (@joosterizer) October 12, 2016

It seems to be working with regards to Twitch too. Whether it's because they don't have to watch adverts, or because they can show off their new emoticons, more people are sitting down at the same time to watch Twitch streams following the announcement. It's even more telling that this time last year concurrent numbers fell during the first weeks of October. This year they've risen by 13 per cent.

As PCGamesN points out, the free subscription system, which lets you send $5 to your favourite stream on a Patreon-like basis, is leading to channels making much more than they did previously. With a bunch of already existing Prime members watching Twitch, suddenly they have some freely disposable ‘income' they can send to their favourite creators without worrying about having to pay anything extra.

It will be interesting to see if this trend lasts going forward, or if Prime will hit a peak and then viewer numbers will begin to level off.

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KitGuru Says: I took out Prime earlier this year to get access to a few shows on Amazon's Instant Video, but the collection of services you get as part of it has proved pretty useful. 

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