Tales from the Twitch Extensions Commerce Pilot: Three companies building amazing experiences

Last year, Twitch invited a handful of merchandise vendors and charity donation platforms to build Twitch Extensions, powered mainly by Amazon Pay checkout, as part of a Commerce in Extension pilot program. These experiences entitled Twitch streamers to sell shirts and raise funds for charity.

The pilot program developers raised almost $1M for charity and sold thousands of shirts, hats, mugs, and plushies to fans on Twitch streams. For a first-time experiment, it’s a positive financial result, but more meaningful is how these experiences made Twitch a more fun place to stream and watch.

Here are a few examples of awesome moments brought to you by Commerce in Extensions:

Teespring: Sub-only Merch and Buying Sprees

Longtime Twitch partner Teespring knows more than anyone about what people love about merch. Joining us for the Commerce pilot, they innovated on the concept of subscriber-exclusive goods creators can sell on their channels. While not the right choice for every channel, Teesprings knows creators need more than one way to build their brand and connect with their viewers.

One of the best ways to forge that connection is through creating moments. Whether it’s in a game, in the Chat, or happening IRL on stream, creators and viewers thrive on the moments they make together.

To make that creating moments a part of merch, Teespring tested a new overlay alert system that shouts out the fans supporting the stream through merch purchases. The slick new on-stream shoutouts were a hit with Janellwheeler’s channel, causing a spontaneous mug-buying spree:

DonorDrive: Charity for one and all

Supporting a charity is always rewarding, but charity streaming on Twitch takes it to a new level. In the last 10 months alone, we’ve seen streams drive $1.5M to charities through the pilot.

DonorDrive built a suite of Extensions to power charitable donations live on stream. Their flagship Extension, Extra Life Charity Fundraising, has been used by over 16,000 Twitch creators since launch. Creators and viewers can see donation updates from the Extension in real time — and creators are even able to shout out individual followers who donate.

“They might get a shout out from the broadcaster, but undoubtedly, [it’s] the personal satisfaction of doing something good that powers the experience,” says Ben Clayton, Integration Developer at DonorDrive.

DonorDrive has already partnered with ASFP, Doctors Without Borders, Wounded Warrior, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Stack Up, Mercy Corps, and American Association for Cancer Research, with more to come. They are excited to help build the presence of charities in the Twitch Extension library by giving nonprofits their own Extension that displays on creators’ streams and profiles.

Fnatic: Limited-edition Drops

Last year, esports organization Fnatic debuted a limited-edition hoodie collaboration with Champions to celebrate their second-place win in the League of Legends 2018 World Championship tournament held in Seoul, South Korea. Based on fans’ enthusiasm for this iconic hoodie, Fnatic brought back 500 of them for sale exclusively through Twitch.

Rather than just offer them up, Fnatic created mini-games fans had to play for a chance to buy the hoodie. Earning a high score won them the right to buy the hoodie while supplies lasted.

“For limited-edition items, you usually enter a raffle to be allowed to buy, or you need to be the fastest to click when it goes on sale,” says Benoit Pagotto, Brand Manager for Fnatic. Coming from French street fashion boutique Colette, Pagotto explains the psychology of streetwear and how he adapted it to a native Twitch experience. “[We] wanted people to compete to be allowed to buy the hoodie. It was based more on skill than luck or randomness.”

Under the hood, the mini-game is a straightforward click-reaction game: Clickable icons of different sizes and values spawned on stream over time. The more (and bigger) icons you click, the more points you score. Winning a minimum of 5,000 points unlocked the hoodie for purchase with a special access link. To prevent cheating, Fnatic disabled link sharing in Chat and canceled purchases for anyone caught distributing the link.

Skill speaks volumes. In just one hour, Fnatic drove 3.5x more revenue than the next-nearest by revenue merchandise Extension drove in the entire month of July.

These are just a few examples of successful Commerce in Extension pilots. If you’re interested in learning more about Commerce in Extensions or have an idea for your own, fill out this form and our team will get back to you.