The latest Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet live streaming industry report has brought with it some new data regarding audiences of the biggest streaming platforms. This report covers the period of Q3 2021 (July - September) and addresses results obtained from Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and Facebook Gaming.
Starting with the main takeaway from the Streamlabs report, Facebook Gaming has overtaken YouTube Gaming in terms of hours watched for the first time. Facebook Gaming registered a total of 1.29 Billion hours watched while YouTube Gaming Live has a total of 1.13 Billion. However, both platforms pale in comparison to the dominion of Twitch which registered 5.79 Billion total hours watched.
In Q3, Facebook Gaming has registered 17.1 Million total hours streamed. YouTube Gaming has 8.4 Million hours. Finally, Twitch once again squashes both platforms with a total of 222.9 Million total hours streamed during this quarter.
Speaking of Twitch, the platform's momentum which was gained at the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns has started to wane. For the first time, Twitch experienced a year-over-year decrease in the number of unique channels streaming on the platform. To put it into perspective, viewers watched 5.79 billion hours of content on Twitch in Q3, an 11% decrease from 6.51 billion hours in Q2.
Adding to the unique channel data, Twitch streamers have broadcasted a total of 222.9 million hours of content, an 8.3% decrease from the previous quarter. Since its all-time high of 264.9 million hours in Q1'21, Twitch has seen a 15.9% decrease in the number of hours streamed to the platform (the most significant decrease in its history).
As mentioned previously, Facebook Gaming is the only platform to experience an increase in hours watched this quarter. It also has overtaken YouTube Gaming in terms of hours watched. While some of this can be attributed to the popularity of Facebook Gaming among international audiences, they have also been busy improving the live streaming functionality of its platform.
Facebook also has had a better history protecting its creators. The platform announced that it is broadening protection for its streamers who want to use copyrighted music in the background of their live streams by including “Level Up” creators. This, coupled with the introduction of Co-streaming and Streamer Fan Groups has shown that Facebook Gaming is heading in the right direction.
Finally, YouTube Gaming's performance, while lacking in comparison with Facebook Gaming and Twitch, is justified as YouTube's top channels are mainly focused on professional eSports events. However, even though eSports are among the most-watched channels on YouTube Gaming, they have a vested interest in iterating on and improving the platform for individual creators.
YouTube recently acquired some of Twitch's big names, TimTheTatman and DrLupo. As new viewers and streamers possibly migrate from other platforms because of these creators, we’ve seen YouTube start to improve the platform’s functionality as a whole. As such, YouTube Gaming's streaming momentum might be able to come back in upcoming quarters.
For more interesting data, we recommend you read the full report from Streamlabs sourced in this article. In other Twitch-related news, Twitch has recently suffered a massive hack that compromised the information of several of its content creators. In response, Twitch performed a mass-reset of every user's Stream Keys to protect its users.
News Source: Streamlabs Report
