It’s estimated that there are about 3.1 billion gamers in the world. Many of them have chosen Twitch, the live streaming platform, to live-stream themselves or watch others. The result — the platform’s popularity is steadily increasing.
Based on the latest data, the viewership is up 38% year-over-year, to 834 billion minutes at the time of writing. That’s about 14 billion hours.
Furthermore, there is an average of 2.91 million concurrent viewers per month, up by 37%. Research estimates that total viewership will be around 300 million frequent esports viewers by 2023.
Let’s take a look at some statistics and breakdowns:
Month | Concurrent viewers (in millions) | Hours watched (in billions) |
January 2021 | 2.92 | 2.17 |
February 2021 | 2.95 | 1.98 |
March 2021 | 2.93 | 2.18 |
April 2021 | 3.11 | 2.24 |
May 2021 | 3.10 | 2.31 |
June 2021 | 2.73 | 1.96 |
In terms of activity, the weekends are seeing the most viewers and streamers. On average, there are about 5% more viewers on Saturday and Sunday, when they reach over three million. Weekends also average about 72.8 million hours watched compared to 67 million on Monday.
There are also 12% more streaming channels on the weekends. Saturday’s average is at 125,800, and Sunday averages 119,500 streaming channels. Monday and Tuesday, for comparison, have 104,300 and 107,400 channels available, respectively.
Additionally, there are an estimated 474 million enthusiasts and occasional esports viewers in the world today. That number is expected to jump to 577.2 million by 2024.
To finalize, we can safely say that the future is bright for gaming and esports.