Hey Sports Tech Fans,
What a hectic week!
Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp going down feels like weeks ago, but it only happened on Monday!
Newcastle have finally been sold to a Saudi back consortium after 14 years of Mike Ashley ownership. The ultimate goal is to surely elevate the club to be among Europe’s elite ala Manchester City and PSG in years gone by.
It has taken a long time to get over the line, in part due to the ongoing issue between Qatar-based BeIN sports, who own Middle East rights to the Premier League and Saudi-based BeoutQ which was illegally rebroadcasting BeIN feeds to users in Saudi Arabia.
Well all of that has now been resolved and Newcastle have new owners.
It remains to be seen whether financial rules will allow Newcastle to receive significant cash injections or if this will have to be a more measured approach over a longer time period.
I mentioned Facebook going down earlier but that was only a minor blip compared to what has happened over at Twitch.
Tweets surfaced on Tuesday that everything had been leaked and by everything I mean EVERYTHING.
It was only a matter of hours before sites popped up showing you what the top 100 streamers have made in the last 2 years!
Later on, as the massive folder of files was poured over by journalists and those interested in gaming and Twitch it became clear that all the source code was included in the leak.
All of the source code for Twitch with a history of changes from its inception in 2011 after pivoting from Justin.tv
The source code included a competitor to Steam which is the biggest marketplace for PC games.
It is unclear at this point whether passwords and emails were leaked but it’s wise to change them if you have a Twitch account.
Twitch did email all users to say that their stream keys have been changed.
Twitch still has a massive lead in the game streaming space over YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming but this was sure to have sent shockwaves through the community and to the top streamers who have had all of their earnings reported out in the open.
These earnings have been confirmed by a number of people featuring on the list.
Some have taken it in their stride as it has become a meme but others might not be so happy and might see future earnings from the platform impacted as a result.
A big revelation was that a Dungeons and Dragons channel is the top earner, grossing $9.6 million in the almost 2 year period included in the leaks.
Have a great sporting weekend,
Will
