2019 has been a soap opera of activity between competing streaming platforms. Mixer and Facebook Gaming have made large strides in growing their brands, slowly but surely breaking the monopoly previously held by Twitch. StreamElements has released their State of the Stream report which details the major trends for the year, revealing how each platform stacks up in the growing fight for streaming dominance.
Overall, Twitch is still the number one platform by a massive margin, currently holding 73% of the market share for hours viewed, down from 75% last year, while both Facebook Gaming and Mixer sit at 3% each, up from 1% in 2018. Overall growth for Twitch has been 20%, while Facebook Gaming boasts an impressive 210% increase, and Mixer 149%.
A point that stands out in the annual report is that, “75% of the hours watched on Twitch are being generated by the top 4K streamers.” It makes sense for the biggest streamers to be attracting the most attention, but 75% is a massive amount of viewership owed to a small proportion of streamers. It is no surprise then that each platform has been working hard to sign the most popular streamers to exclusivity agreements for their platforms.
The first big signing of this kind occurred when Tyler “Ninja” Blevins shocked fans by saying that he was moving from Twitch over to Mixer, followed later on by Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, and others have joined as well. Facebook Gaming has also moved to sign exclusivity deals with Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang, along with streamers from around the world.
Twitch was slow to respond, not making any major announcements of its own until only recently, securing Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo, Saqib “LIRIK” Zahid, Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar, Nicholas “Nick Eh 30” Amyoony to their platform. Since these are the types of individuals that drive so much viewership while streaming, we should expect to see far more exclusivity deals in the future, as securing talent appears to be the best strategy for growth.
Every platform saw growth in 2019, and the types of games played remained largely consistent from last year. League of Legends, Fortnite, and Just Chatting were the top three types of channels viewed. Newer games also helped drive viewership, with Apex Legends and Teamfight Tactics leading the way, and since they have a strong and ongoing esports presence, they should remain relevant for 2020 as well.
While Twitch still holds dominance over the market, other streaming platforms are making strides in capturing market share. 2020 will be an interesting year to observe how this continues to develop, especially because Twitch seems unable to avoid controversy with how it deals with disciplinary actions, especially when it comes to women.
Source: Streamelements.com