Twitch, Facebook Gaming Enjoy 45% Viewership Jump

Ennan Zapanta December 23, 2021
Twitch, Facebook Gaming Enjoy 45% Viewership Jump

In 2021, live streaming grew across almost all platforms, with Twitch and Facebook Gaming both seeing a 45 percent year-over-year increase compared to 2020.

Twitch’s platform grew from 17 billion hours watched in 2020 to 24 billion hours watched in 2021 as a result of this growth. According to Rainmaker, StreamElements’ analytics partner, Facebook Gaming saw slightly higher growth this year, with a 47 percent year-over-year increase from 3.6 billion to 5.3 billion hours watched.

Throughout 2021, Just Chatting was by far the most popular category on Twitch, with a total of 3.1 billion hours watched. That’s more than 1 billion hours more than Grand Theft Auto V, which came in second, and 1.3 billion hours more than League of Legends, which came in third. The only other game to surpass 1 billion hours watched was Fortnite, with VALORANT rounding out the top five with roughly 949 million hours watched.

With over 261 million hours seen in 2021, xQc remained at the top of the Twitch ecosystem for the second year in a row. As the king holds his throne, this number is up from 143.6 million hours seen in 2020.

Only six names from the previous year remained in the top ten streamers in terms of hours seen in 2021, compared to only six names from the previous year. Gaules slid to third position, with loud coringa claiming second place behind xQc, while shroud returned to the list and both MontanaBlack88 and HasanAbi were added.

In addition to Twitch and Facebook Gaming, YouTube Gaming reported that in the first half of 2021, the platform had 800 billion gaming-related views, over 90 million hours of live streaming, and over 250 million uploads, while end-of-year data have yet to be announced.

StreamElements also collaborated with Streams Charts to release detailed data on Trovo, an upcoming streaming platform that saw a 715 percent increase in viewership in Q3 2021, jumping to 73 million hours watched and continuing its quarter-over-quarter growth that hasn’t slowed since its beta launch in July 2020.