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In many ways, the internet was made for livestreaming. Starting with Jennicam back in 1996, it has taken the medium a while to get to the fabled plateau of productivity.

Livestreaming in its genesis of Twitch, Meerkat, Periscope and Facebook Live never fleshed out a compatible monetisation model. As a result, it struggled with marketplace supply-side liquidity since livestreaming hosts weren't incentivised to stream consistently. Viewers then stopped watching as there was no guarantee of good content on the platform. Livestreaming only became a medium after the emergence of effective monetisation, as then creators had the incentive to keep to a regular broadcasting schedule for followers.

Bolstered by Covid-19, livestreaming is now ubiquitous in China and increasingly mainstream in the west. The Chinese market is estimated to be worth RMB 433.8 billion ($64.2bn USD) in 2019 and is expected to double by the end of 2020. Twitch currently has 6.2 million monthly broadcasters, and games livestreaming as an industry is estimated to be worth $50bn. Livestreaming has created massive stars; on Twitch, Ninja the Fortnite streamer has ~7m fans and even higher earnings. In China, Li Jiaqi the 'Lipstick queen' sold 15,000 tubs of lipstick in 15 minutes on Taobao. Viya, who is essentially Oprah incarnated as a livestreamer, can command 37m viewers (bigger than the audience for the Oscars or Game of Thrones finale) during a stream. These big numbers are representative of the digitalisation of distribution and entertainment that's been quietly occurring throughout the world. The fact that livestreaming has become their de-facto medium owes much to the unlocking of effective monetisation strategies.

Livestreaming as a medium is a conflation of a product as well as as a distribution channel. It exists on a spectrum of being pure entertainment on one-side and a new go-to-market strategies on the other, with different kinds of monetisation models for each side. While western startups have centred around the 'livestreaming as product' theme, China, with its enabling infrastructure in payment and fulfilment, have been quick to adopt livestreaming as a new distribution channel. This June's 618 Shopping Festival, saw Alibaba and JD.com repo...

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