The platform wars between Twitch and YouTube have seen countless Twitch partnered streamers jump ship over to the legacy video hosting platform. Building out its exclusive streaming roster with names such as Ludwig, Sykkuno, FaZe Swagg, Fuslie, and countless more, YouTube Live Gaming has signaled the platform’s priority in taking over the gaming space.
YouTube remains the most popular platform for all video and general livestreamed content, but gaming competitor Twitch still has a stranglehold over gaming related content according to data from Streams Charts. Despite YouTube’s investment in live gaming content, the platform still isn’t coming close to Twitch’s success in that arena.
YouTube is far above any other platform in terms of general viewers, boasting 2.7 billion hours watched in Sept. 2022 alone. Despite this, YouTube still falls below its perennial competitor, Twitch, for gaming-specific content. This is largely due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of YouTube’s live content is made up of 24-hour channels, news broadcasts, and other general forms of livestreaming.
Perhaps most indicative of this divide is the fact that YouTube’s biggest streamer isn’t a person at all. Lofi Girl, a 24-hour music channel, is squarely YouTube’s largest livestreaming creator. Ahead of ABS-CBN Entertainment, Sky News, and all of YouTube’s gaming livestreamers, Lofi Girl recorded over 18.72 million hours watched across 1,115 hours streamed in Sept. 2022.
In terms of gaming content, Twitch is still king. In the same month, Twitch recorded over 1.8 billion hours watched in total, where as YouTube Live Gaming fell only slightly ahead of Facebook Gaming. With 434 million hours watched of gaming content, YouTube Live Gaming makes up only a small fraction of YouTube’s overall livestreaming viewership numbers.
While other websites such as Afreeca and Trovo trail behind, Twitch still has relatively little competition despite some of its top creators departing from the website. League of Legends, GTA V, and PUBG remain the most popular globally-streamed games across the board.
Though YouTube has sought to build out its gaming personalities and even re-envision the streaming service with its new creators in mind, it may be some time if YouTube ever hopes to overcome Twitch. General streaming numbers globally are currently on a downward trajectory for streaming websites. From Aug. to Sept. 2022, Twitch dipped the lowest at a seven percent decrease, while YouTube Live Gaming decreased marginally by one percent.
YouTube and Twitch will inevitably still clash over the prominent gaming-focused audience, but for it now it appears Twitch still holds this segment of viewers captivated.
