Twitch has an unusual creation myth. It actually began its life as one of many channels on Justin.TV, a startup founded in 2007 that initially consisted of a 24 / 7 live stream of founder Justin Kan’s daily life. From there Justin.TV expanded into a platform that allowed users to broadcast their own streams. Twitch, known then as Twitch.TV, was simply the channel dedicated to video gaming.

eSports are suddenly the golden goose everyone is chasing

By 2010, however, it was clear that Twitch was growing far faster than the rest of Justin.TV's channels, and in fact was beginning to rival its parent site in terms of size. So Emmett Shear, Justin.TV’s CTO and an avid StarCraft player, helped to spin Twitch off into a stand-alone company, keeping the basic concept of a broadcasting platform, but working to build out a feature set geared toward gamers.

This focus set Twitch apart from other streaming platforms. "The industry has largely adopted Twitch because they have the best infrastructure, features, and by far the biggest and most passionate community of gamers," says Kim Phan, the senior manager of eSports at Blizzard.

But while Twitch has a central role in the eSports ecosystem, its future is far from certain. There are a number of very large and well-funded competitors to Twitch eager to get into the market. Ustream, which has raised a total of $60 million dollars, is also integrated into the new PlayStation 4 and has created a gaming channel dedicated to streaming players. The 800-pound gorilla in the room is YouTube, of course, which has been expanding its live platform to a wider audience in recent months and begun to curate a gaming channel as well.

And while Twitch has forged major partnerships, not everyone thinks that can last. "A lot of times Twitch is compared to ESPN, and I think that’s fair," says Rick Heitzmann, a general partner at FirstMark Capital and investor in Riot, which develops the world’s most popular eSports title, League of Legends. "But if the major leagues could go back in time and see what ESPN would become, they would never have licensed them all their games." Right now, Twitch is the platform of choice for all the biggest developers to broadcast their tournaments, but Heitzmann isn’t convinced that will last. "What is to stop them from creating their own streaming technology and just cutting out the middleman?"

If Twitch were to lose its position as the number one portal for eSports, it has another, stranger business budding on its platform. Along with live competition, Twitch also hosts thousands of individual gamers who simply broadcast themselves playing casually at home. "It’s always weird when I try and explain to people what I do for a living," says Tim Mines, known as Spamfish on Twitch. "I sit around all day playing video games and talking rubbish and people pay to follow along."

The average user spends more than one and a half hours per day watching Twitch, and the company runs advertising against that audience. Mines is one of the more than 4,500 "partners" on Twitch, gamers who have built up a substantial following and can get a cut of the advertising revenue generated by their viewership. Fans can also "donate" directly to their favorite gamers in exchange for ad-free viewing and digital goodies. "It’s a bit surreal," says Mines. "I’ve quit my day job, I’m gaming eight hours a day, doing what I love, and making a living."

Will the audience for watching other people play video games really develop into a meaningful business to rival television? During the Sunday of Valve’s DOTA tournament, Twitch recorded 4.5 million unique viewers, each of whom watched an average of more than 2 hours.

"Right now eSports has a relatively small viewership, something along the lines of America’s Cup," says video game analyst Michael Pachter. "But if it keeps growing at this rate, it will be the size of NASCAR pretty soon, and while that’s still a niche audience, it’s definitely nothing to sneeze at."