StreamElements has released its monthly State of Stream for September, offering insight into the performance of various different streaming platforms.
Twitch continues its dominance of game streaming with a cumulative 1.8 billions of hours viewed. This was followed by YouTube at 434 million hours and Facebook gaming at 328 million. However, when including non-gaming streams, YouTube comes ahead.
We’ve previously written that mobile gaming streams typically do better on YouTube than Twitch, however the top ten live channels on the platform are dominated by news and music channels, with the most popular live channel of the month, Lofi Girl, generating a collective 18.72 million hours.
There was a noticeable dip in hours viewed across both platforms, with YouTube content declining 1 percent and Twitch falling 7 percent compared to August, however numbers still remain above pre-pandemic levels. However, the report states that September having fewer days than August could also factor into this decline.
Mobile dominates elsewhere
Mobile is a mainstay in the top-streamed games on a variety of smaller platforms. On NimoTV, Garena Free Fire and PUBG Mobile were the third and fourth most viewed games of Q2-Q3. Trovo also had mobile titles in the top five: PUBG Mobile, and Call of Duty Mobile in the same period.
Bigo Live had four mobile games among the top five most viewed games for Q2-Q3: Free Fire, PUBG Mobile, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and Arena of Valor. However, Nonolive showed the most success on mobile platform, with all five games either mobile exclusive (PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, and Brawl Stars) or cross-platform with mobile availability (Roblox and Minecraft.)
Interestingly, each of these platforms targets emerging markets, and this is reflected among the top 50 streamers on each platform. On Bigo Live and Nonolive, the top fifty streamers list Arabic or English as their primary languages, whereas Trovo streamers speak Russian, Spanish, or Greek, and the top fifty NimoTV streamers speak Vietnamese or French. This suggests that there’s high demand for mobile streaming content in emerging markets, such as South Asia or MENA. Last week, we wrote that Jordan will be home to over two million mobile gamers within five years, showcasing the strength of mobile gaming in the MENA region.
