Caffeine, a streaming service for live sports, has reached 60 million monthly active users (MAU), the US company announced this week. The milestone marks a significant jump for the AVOD service, which stood at 5 million MAU this time last year.
Alongside the expansion of its user base, the company has also witnessed 140x revenue growth over the last six months. This stands in contrast to the struggles of some of the streaming giants over the last two years – so what is fuelling the growth at Caffeine?
Launched in 2018 as a live-streaming esports platform to rival Twitch, Caffeine has pivoted to live sports content, and has spent the last year building up a roster of popular and niche sports programming. This includes partnerships with World Poker Tour, Venice Basketball League and Ultimate Rap League, a New York-based rap battle tournament.
Caffeine also hosts video content, including podcasts, from a range of media companies, including FOX Sports, Barstool Sports and The Action Network. The company additionally has financial backing from Disney and Fox, both of which have seats on Caffeine’s board.
A blended offering
The company said the lineup has attracted “young and diverse cord-cutting audiences”, as well as new advertising partners looking to reach this key demographic, since the service started running ads this year. And for sports leagues looking to distribute and monetise their content, Caffeine said the streaming service provides opportunities vacated by linear TV, live sports’ traditional home.
“We’ve entered an exciting new phase of explosive growth for the company, with a focus on the majority of live sports,” said Caffeine CEO Ben Keighran. “With the decline of traditional linear cable options for leagues, nearly 11,000 global sports leagues have been left to navigate their own unique distribution path.”
That drop-off in linear viewing has made it harder for sports leagues to monetise their competitions, prompting some to go direct-to-consumer with their own streaming offerings. But for smaller leagues without the resources to build their own streaming services, it could be easier to seek a distribution partner with an inbuilt user base.
And Caffeine’s origins as a Twitch-style gaming community provides that centralised audience, according to the firm, as well as live streaming technology, which the company says attracts sports leagues to the platform. This technology includes sports broadcasting functionality, both for real-time and replays, as well as an embeddable video player.
Distribution on Caffeine also makes content more discoverable, according to the business, claiming that content owners receive 10 times the viewership they get from other distributors. Caffeine is available for free on iOS and Android, as well as for CTV platforms Roku and Amazon Fire. The company says this gives media owners access to an engaged user base looking to access a variety of sports content, from basketball to battle rap, in one location.
“Caffeine is helping these leagues expand monetisation and distribution opportunities at scale, while providing a social-first, cord-cutting, and highly engaged young audience a platform to watch their favorite competitions in an interactive and community-based way,” said Keighran.
