Twitch dominates YouTube, Facebook as top streaming platform
Users logged 9 billion hours watched through Amazon's free service
Twitch came out as the top streaming platform for games in 2019.
The free Amazon-owned service, where users livestream themselves playing video games and other users watch, logged more than 9 billion hours watched last year, which was a 20 percent increase year-over-year. That’s compared to YouTube Gaming, which logged just 2 billion streaming hours and Facebook Gaming, which racked up about 350 million hours.
The top five most-watched games were League of Legends, Fortnite, Just Chatting, Grand Theft Auto V and Dota 2, according to the StreamElements & Arsenal.gg's State of the Stream report. The top 10 games made up 5 billion of the 9 billion total hours. And 75 percent of gaming hours watched on Twitch were generated by the top 4,000 streamers, according to the findings.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMZN | AMAZON.COM INC. | 197.12 | -1.26 | -0.64% |
By garnering 73 percent of the live-game-streaming market share, it faces creeping competition from other platforms. Facebook Gaming viewership increased more than 200 percent year-over-year, YouTube Gaming grew only 16 percent and Mixer, a Seattle-based live platform, had a 149 percent increase in viewership.
Twitch also lost one of its highest-profile contributors, Ninja, who said the inability to make non-gaming content was a factor in leaving the platform. Another contributor, Shroud, also expressed the desire for more ways to connect intimately with fans.
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The platform is taking steps to diversify its offering. In October, Twitch announced it partnered with Endel to create a channel to stream music instead of games. And the sounds are designed to improve sleep.
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“Sleep is universally important and everyone is not having enough of it — especially gamers,” Endel CEO Oleg Stavitsky, told Variety. “That’s why we decided to bring our sleep-inducing psychoacoustic adaptive soundscapes to Twitch to give their community a chance to sleep better when the streaming is done.”
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