Twitch sees decline in viewers, but is still clear favourite for game streaming

Fortnite

Twitch saw its first record decline in viewership in Q2 2019, claims StreamElements.

According to the latest StreamElements State of the Stream report, Twitch saw just over 2.7 billion hours of live streaming content viewed on the platform for the quarter, making up 72.2% of the total time spent watching live streams.

While Twitch is the clear favourite amongst viewers and streamers alike, this does represent a dip of 2% from Q1. The report claims that this is not a reflection of a decline, but rather a very strong first quarter. 

Twitch’s closest competitor, YouTube, had 19.5% of the live stream industry for the quarter. The 284 million viewership hours in May was a landmark, marking the highest number of viewership hours for YouTube Live streams to date. In total, YouTube saw over 735 million viewership hours. 

Facebook Gaming has emerged as the third biggest platform, with a share of 5.3% (nearly 200 million) of viewership hours, while Microsoft-owned Mixer languished in fourth place with 112 million viewership hours (3%).

Twitch’s top 5,000 streamers – dubbed the T5K – account for around 2 billion of the 2.7 billion hours viewed in Q2, a 12% growth of concurrent viewers for the group.

While this makes for positive reading, those invested in the esports space should temper their expectations, with esports making up fewer than 25% of the viewership hours of the top 200 channels on Twitch. Over three quarters (75.8%) of viewership of the top 200 channels is made up of individual streamers rather than brands or esports accounts. 

Many of the top streamers do broadcast games which are played at esports events, but the data shows that viewers prefer to watch these games outside of a professional setting.

Fortinite and League of Legends remain at the top of the charts of games played but saw a 3.66% and 5.96% drop respectively. Apex Legends which spent Q1 in third place entirely dropped out of the top 10, with Grand Theft Auto V seeing a huge increase of 151.65% to take its spot.

The Stream Elements State of the Stream Q2 2019 report can be read in its entirety here