Snapchat & Amazon Put on Notice By Rihanna & Drake
by Kori Hale
- Drake breaks Twitch streaming record with 630K concurrent views
- Rihanna pushes Snap shares down 6% in a week
The new Drake and Rihanna collaboration isn’t on a new song, this time around they are impacting social media and gaming stocks. Rihanna helped to tank Snapchat’s (SNAP -2.56%) stock while Drake was able to help push Amazon’s (AMZN +2.69%) stock higher.
Why This Matters: When we have something to say money talks. Snapchat put out an insensitive ad making light of domestic abuse depicting Rihanna and Chris Brown in a game of “Would You Rather” and there investors paid the ultimate price. After Rihanna ripped the company on social media shares finished the week down more than six percent trading right above it’s IPO price from a year ago.
Drake on the other hand gave Amazon’s stock a bump up. When the rapper decided to stream himself playing the popular game “Fortnite” (produced by Epic) on Twitch (owned by Amazon) investors were the real winners. The rapper broke the Twitch record for most concurrent views in a non-tournament stream with 630,000 people watching at its peak, according to The Verge. This game is played by 45 million people worldwide and it’s about to get even bigger as it launches on smartphones. KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Evan Wingren predicts the monetization of multi-player games from other publishers will suffer by about 10 percent due to competition from “Fortnite.”
Situational Awareness: The power of the culture to positively or negatively impact stocks was on full display across different sectors. Be on the lookout to see if Snap’s shares can rebound this week after the epic dragging Rihanna put it through. “Fortnite” producer Epic is 40% owned by Chinese company Tencent (TCEHY +2.45%) and it will be interesting to see if they look to more celebrities as part of their strategy to influence gaming culture.
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