Twitch exits Korea, AfreecaTV shares surge after announcement

Industry

Published: 06 Dec. 2023, 10:25

Twitch exits Korea, AfreecaTV shares surge after announcement

Twitch logo [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Twitch, a U.S. streaming service run by Amazon, is pulling out of Korea as of Feb. 27 next year, it said, due to expensive network fees.

Twitch's CEO Dan Clancy made the announcement on Twitch Korea's blog Tuesday.

"We have spent significant effort working to reduce these costs so that we could find a way for the Twitch business to remain in Korea," he wrote. "First, we experimented with a peer-to-peer model for source quality. Then, we adjusted source quality to a maximum of 720p."

Despite attempts, however, the U.S. streaming service found "there is no pathway forward" for its business in Korea due to the country's network fees, which are "10 times more expensive than in most other countries."

With Twitch out of the game, the two dominant streaming platforms in Korea left are AfreecaTV and Naver.

AfreecaTV's shares shot up 16.98 percent to trade at 75,100 won ($57.2) at 10:09 a.m. Naver, which announced that it will roll out a new live streaming service next year, shares rose 0.7 percent to trade at 214,500 won.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]