Livestreaming platform Caffeine closes, despite big media support

Caffeine, an interactive livestreaming platform for sports and entertainment, suddenly shut down Wednesday after receiving nearly $300 million in investments from companies like Fox, Disney, and Cox.

The social livestreaming service, which launched in 2016, announced on its website that it was shutting down because it was “still not quite profitable” and would be determining its “next steps.” The service had billed itself as an alternative to the video-game-centric livestreaming service Twitch, and also allowed viewers to watch content together—regardless of distance—primarily live sports, entertainment, esports, and competitions.

According to Caffeine’s Wednesday announcement, the platform ultimately grew to four million users per day and 61 million per month.

“We’ve had a huge impact on the industry and will again soon, in a different way,” Caffeine’s website post stated.

In 2018, 21st Century Fox invested $100 million in the then-startup, in addition to a joint venture by the two companies called Caffeine Studios. Through the joint venture, 21st Century Fox said it would create exclusive content broadcasted on Caffeine, and its chairman, Lachlan Murdoch, would join the streaming platform’s board.

That same year, Caffeine also started streaming live concerts on its service after striking a deal with entertainment company Live Nation. The streaming service also received investments from Disney after Caffeine took part in the 2018 Disney Accelerator program, by which Disney gives resources to innovative companies.

“We want to bring the world together around friends and live broadcasts,” Ben Keighran, Caffeine’s CEO and cofounder, said at the time. “It’s an ambitious goal, but one we believe is attainable with the support of our amazing new partners, our awesome and ever-growing community, and the content that, together, we can bring onto the platform.”

In 2020, Fox invested in Caffeine again, in addition to the cable company Cox and various other firms, as a part of a $113 million funding round raised by the streaming service.

As a startup, Caffeine aimed to differentiate itself from its livestreaming competitors, YouTube and Twitch, by offering ad-free livestreams and allowing broadcasters to earn money through microtransactions. In recent years, Caffeine pivoted to center more on live sports.

By the time of its shutdown, Caffeine announced that it had formed 200 partnerships with different niche sports leagues, sports creators, competitive event organizers, and sports media publishers to stream content across 17 sports categories.

In February, it was announced that the streaming service had partnered with the LIV Golf tour to broadcast coverage of its tournaments and original programs to a “younger, more diverse audience than many traditional broadcasting platforms,” according to a statement by LIV Golf.

Caffeine’s shutdown left LIV Golf without a paid streaming rights partner in the U.S. despite six events in its 2024 campaign. Fast Company has reached out to Caffeine and LIV Golf for comment.