Highlights
- Caffeine TV announces it is shutting down due to lack of profitability despite raising over $300 million.
- The platform initially targeted gaming but pivoted to music and sports streaming.
- Caffeine TV had 61 million users and partnerships with over 200 sports organizations.
After years of operation, the streaming service Caffeine TV has officially shut down its operations. Despite launching to compete with Amazon's Twitch platform, Caffeine failed to achieve profitability by 2024.
Caffeine TV, also known as Caffeine.tv and simply "Caffeine," was founded in 2016 by Ben Keighran and Sam Roberts, who helped design Apple TV. Caffeine TV began as a streaming platform with major game-focused streaming services like Twitch and Kick in its sights. The venture was backed by major investors, initially raising more than USD $100 million from 21st Century Fox, and launched in 2018 with then chairperson Lachlan Murdoch on the company's board. By 2024, the platform had raised over $300 million in total and also pivoted from gaming to music and entertainment streaming, and then to sports.
Caffeine TV's ambition to take on Twitch and other streaming titans will no longer pan out, as the platform shut down on June 26, 2024. As of press time, the official Caffeine TV page has been taken offline and replaced with a goodbye message from the company. The message mentioned the decision to end operations and trumpeted some of the service's achievements over its more than 5 years operating.
Caffeine TV Shuts Down Completely After Failing to Make A Profit
The primary reason for Caffeine TV's shutdown was simple profitability. After years operating and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, the business failed to make a profit. Despite this, Caffeine TV's goodbye message did highlight some of the service's achievements, including growing to more than 61 million users (with about 4 million using the platform daily), making partnerships with over 200 sports organizations and channels across multiple sports categories. Caffeine TV also said that it had explored multiple business models to try to make things work, including trying gifting, subscriptions, pay-per-view, and ad-supported business models. The dip into advertising was even a move in direct opposition to the early promise of Caffeine TV, which initially appealed to viewers by promising streams with no ads, unlike the ads commonly seen on Twitch and other major platforms.
Ultimately, though, it wasn't enough. Despite open dissatisfaction with market leaders and bans on services like Twitch and Kick in some regions and countries, Caffeine wasn't profitable. Even pivots to music that involved hosting shows like the Ultimate Rap League and less popular sports like the World Surf League and others didn't make ends meet. The shutdown also seemed to take some Caffeine TV partners by surprise, particularly the LIV Golf League, which used Caffeine TV as its first streaming partner and is currently in the middle of its season.
Reactions online to the shutdown of Caffeine TV seemed to be mixed. Some social media users said they'd never heard of Caffeine TV, while others shared positive experiences with but lamented that the viewership just didn't seem to be there. The situation underlines the cost of a streaming platform, which applies not just to people experiencing high subscription prices on Twitch, but to people attempting to make competitors work.
