WWE Online, Twitch close in on Amazon in bandwidth growth

Who is the fastest growing online video provider? Put your hand down, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX): A new report from Qwilt says that live online video, led by entities like WWE and Twitch, is consuming bandwidth at an ever-increasing rate. In fact, those two content providers account for 2 percent of all online video volume on the Internet, just behind Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), which takes up 3 percent.

With live events continuing to grow in importance--for one, it helps alleviate some of the woes caused by time-shifting for broadcasters like NBC--"it was only a matter of time until the trend moved online," Dorothy Pomerantz wrote in a Forbes article.

Growing quietly in the background is Major League Baseball Advanced Media, with a streaming video infrastructure it's been developing since 2002. It's the unit behind MLB.tv, which allows viewers to watch out-of-market games for between $110 and $130 per year. That experience and stability has attracted other sports broadcasters: MLBAM powered Turner's record-making March Madness live streaming, and it was the infrastructure behind WWE Online, which boasts 667,000 paid subscribers, and its most recent WrestleMania event.

For MLBAM, that means big profits, with revenues of $700 million in 2012 and an operating income of $230 million, Forbes reported.

For more:
- Forbes has this story
- Time has this story about Twitch

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