Although Twitch is primarily known as an outlet for esports, a new channel seeks to expand its reach into traditional sports including live games, highlights, and original programming.
Stadium, which launched in 2017, provides live and on-demand games for multiple online platforms. It’s owned by a conglomerate of entertainment and sports enterprises including Sinclair Broadcast Group, the NHL, and the PGA Tour.
Twitch will already be the home to 11 Thursday Night Football games for the 2018 season. After Fox was awarded the broadcasting contract in a deal worth more than $3 billion, the NFL renewed its deal with Amazon for two more years to broadcast the games online to its 100 million Prime video members.
According to Variety, the streaming deal was for anywhere from $50 to $65 million. The inclusion of Twitch was a new addition — the service will live-stream the TNF games free for everyone on the platform, whether they have a Prime membership or not. Amazon has said the broadcasts will include “enhanced viewing experiences” for Twitch watchers.
The new partnership with Stadium means Twitch will increase their offerings with more than 250 live games and events.
“As Twitch continues to expand into adjacent areas of interest surfaced from our community of gamers, physical sports are gaining traction,” said Jane Weedon of Twitch in an announcement. “Stadium effectively taps into this passion with its broad range of programming from football and basketball to competitive Frisbee, ensuring sports fans have a lot of variety to tune into 24/7.”
Running alongside the main feed will be Twitch Stadium 2, a co-streaming channel featuring commentary and analysis various Stadium and Twitch personalities. The NBA G League broadcasts on Twitch also use a co-streaming broadcast.
“We continue to focus our strategy on reaching fans on whatever platform they consume sports content and are excited to introduce Stadium to the millions of active and engaged viewers on Twitch,” said Brendan Canning of Stadium. “We look forward to tapping into a new, growing audience of fans and bringing an array of top tier games and daily and original sports programming to Twitch.”
This is the second 24/7 sports channel on Twitch after the debut of Eleven Sports in March. The channel is free to U.S. users, although Eleven Prime subscribers who pay $5 a month can get some extras, including ad-free broadcasts.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.