A Record 2 Billion Hours Were Watched In Twitch In March
A series of statistics show that the average number of hours worked on Twitch increased from 33 million to 43 million from March 8 to March 21, and the statistics set show that the total number of hours viewed in the first quarter of 2020 reached a massive 62%. The report also found that Twitch broke the record for most streamed hours in a single month, with over 2 billion hours in March. Twitch recorded a record 5 billion hours viewed in the second quarter, reaching an all-time high of 2.5 billion hours viewed in the first quarter of 2020.
Twitch’s lead was even bigger in the fourth quarter of 2020 when Facebook first overtook YouTube. The total number of hours watched and streamed in the third quarter of 2020 was the highest in the history of streaming and television hours, according to the report, compared to 106.2 million at the time.
YouTube Gaming, for its part, doubled the number of hours viewed in the second quarter, from 749 hours in 2019 to 1,503 hours in 2020, and doubled to 1.5 billion by the end of the third quarter, reaching a new all-time high of 2.4 billion hours. YouTube Gaming’s increased live hours and increased live game streams more than doubled in the second quarter of 2020, reaching 1 million hours and over 2 billion for the year.
In addition to the annual increase, in January 2021 Twitch saw more than two billion hours viewed, while Facebook Gaming reached 439 million. This brings Twitter’s total number of hours viewed over the course of the year to 2.5 billion, compared with 1.4 billion in the 2019 edition, which counted November 2019 as the first month of the new year and the second quarter of 2020.
The previous record was held by the League of Legends Worlds 2020 tournament, which recorded 1.8 million simultaneous viewers in October 2020. Apex was an instant hit on Twitch, attracting the attention of some of the platform’s top creators, including a mention in the top 10 most popular games of all time, which earned it third place within hours of being viewed throughout the month. The boom in viewer numbers continued in March, with the second-biggest month in Twitch’s history clocking in 182 million hours. The record has been held since January 1, 2019, according to company data.
The launch of the PlayStation 4 only surpassed the launch of the PS5 in the overall ranking: In March, a total of 2.5 million people watched simultaneously, setting a new record for the largest single month in the company’s history. The average concurrent audience, i.e. the number of viewers watching Twitch simultaneously, increased by 63.4% in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, while the average total number of simultaneous viewers of all games on the platform reached 2.4 million in the second quarter. To illustrate how much the industry is blowing up year after year, Twitch has played 105% more Facebook games than in March 2020. That was surpassed only by Fortnite’s “Black Hole” event, which, according to company data, drew more than 1.8 million viewers simultaneously – a record for a single day in Twitch history.
The launch of the PS5 appears to have set a record for concurrent Twitch viewers, with estimates ranging from 2.8 million to 3.1 million, according to company data. League of Legends Worlds is the most popular game on the platform at the moment, setting the current record for simultaneous Twitch viewership (see Twitch’s usage statistics for more on this record).
Four million viewers tuned in to watch the tournament’s content, which together played for more than 24 hours. The report’s biggest peak shows Twitch broke its record for hourlong viewing in March with more than 2.8 million simultaneous viewers for League of Legends Worlds, compared with 1.7 million in February.
In 2016, a total of 292 billion minutes of video were viewed on Twitch, with viewers sending 14.2 billion chat messages during those hours. Twitch accounted for 90% of all streamed hours, surpassing both MNSBC and CNN for the first time in its history, according to the report. As a result, Twitch had the second-highest number of simultaneous viewers in the U.S. and the third-highest number in Europe.
At the same time, Twitch’s statistics for 2018 and 2019 show that the number of concurrent channels has increased from 41,100 to 54,700. Coronavirus reversed a gradual downward trend, with the average Twitch streamer’s numbers rising to 7 million from 5 million in March.
The biggest jump in activity in Twitch’s statistics came from VALORANT, which took up nearly 30% of all Twitch viewers in the first month of live streaming. Minecraft player TommyInnit crept into the top 10 for the first time in his Twitch career, becoming the most-subscribed Twitch streamer, eclipsing Minecraft streamers Ranboo and Ludwig. Statistics from TwitchTracker show that his underdog reached 92,635. He also became one of the biggest subscribers on Twitch, and in the 22 days he was live, he surpassed 200,000 subscribers.