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The White House is holding a live gaming event to promote Obamacare and it involves Shaq

The White House is holding a live-streamed video game tournament next week to encourage people to sign up for "Obamacare".

Basketball star Shaquille O'Neal announced the December 12 event on Thursday via a YouTube video.

The White House will host a number of eSports stars to take part in gaming matches in different games. The event will be live-streamed on Twitch – the video game streaming service Amazon bought in 2014.

The event is a bid to raise awareness about the Affordable Care Act or "Obamacare".

"Young adults had the highest uninsured rates before the Affordable Care Act and have seen the sharpest drop in uninsured rates since 2010," Erik Martin, policy advisor for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

"But millions of millennials remain uninsured, and many of those uninsured young adults could qualify for tax credits on the Health Insurance Marketplace to keep insurance affordable. In fact, most HealthCare.gov consumers can find a plan for under $75 a month, less than their cell phone bill."

Twitch has 9.7 million daily active users and each person on average watches 106 minutes of video per day. This is a highly engaged community that the White House is hoping to attract.

ESports is also big business. Revenues from eSports are set to grow 51.7 percent year-on-year in 2016 to $493 million, and eventually hit over $1.12 billion in 2019.