Faced with declining audiences and a tense economic context, the Webedia group made the decision to close its webTV LeStream on Twitch.
The date is not yet defined, but the stop of LeStream is well and truly recorded. The Webedia group will end the broadcast of webTV on Twitch, revealed Tele-Leisure. Confirmed with Tech&Co by several internal sources, this decision was made due toa drop in audience since the beginning of 2021. Contacted by Tech&Co, Webedia has not yet responded.
Launched in February 2017, the project consisted of offering programs around video games, including debate or current events. All carried by content creators. But today, the streaming landscape has changed, and viewers are heading more to the videographers’ channels directly rather than these collegiate structures.
Webedia still on sale
“For two years, Twitch viewers have changed their habits and prefer to watch talent on their personal channel, they only came to LeStream out of obligation”, points out a Webedia employee to Télé-Loisirs.
Above all, several economic issues explain the shutdown of the LeStream channel. First, Webedia was put up for sale a year ago by Fimalac, which owns almost all of its capital. If Vivendi showed interest in October 2022, the progress of the negotiations is still awaited.
Then, the strategy of brands (and therefore of advertisers) no longer seems to correspond to the proposition of webTV. Despite its daily “Le récap” meeting, the channel has not managed to create a sufficiently interesting peak audience to monetize its programmes.
Removal of the morning grid
Especially since Webedia produces two successful shows on the Twitch platform: Zen and Popcorn. The latter, carried by the streamer Domingo (Pierre-Alexis Bizot), moreover very regularly exceeds 50,000 spectators on average, according to the site TwitchTracker.
At the end of 2022, Webedia had already tried to limit the broadcasting costs of the LeStream channel. This strategy took concrete form in the removal of the morning schedule and the addition of program rebroadcasts at the start of the afternoon.
As of next month, investments in advertising content will cease, specifies Télé-Loisirs. As for the broadcast of LeStream, it should continue until June.
