Twitch Retains Massive Live-Streaming Lead Despite Slight Q2 Viewership Dip
Twitch dominates the live-streaming market with over 72% of total hours watched in the second quarter of 2019. Rivals like YouTube Live and Facebook Gaming show gradual growth, but Twitch still faces ongoing challenges with discoverability for new streamers.
Twitch commands the live-streaming industry by capturing 72.2% of all hours watched in the second quarter of 2019. The Amazon-owned platform sees a total of 2.72 billion hours of viewership, easily outpacing YouTube Live, Facebook Gaming, and Microsoft's Mixer. Although this marks Twitch's first-ever quarterly decline in hours watched, it still stands as the platform's second-biggest quarter on record.
Competitors gradually chip away at the market share as YouTube Live breaks its own record with 284 million hours watched in May. Facebook Gaming also gains momentum by overtaking Mixer to claim the third-place spot in the live-streaming rankings. Meanwhile, viewer interests on Twitch shift away from major esports titles like Fortnite and League of Legends toward the "Just Chatting" vlogging category.
Despite its massive overall success, Twitch struggles to solve its long-standing discoverability problem for new creators. Nearly 75% of all Twitch viewership concentrates on just the top 5,000 channels, leaving little audience for the vast majority of broadcasters. The platform introduces features like Raids and Squad Streams to help smaller creators, but the top 200 channels still average a massive 10,590 concurrent viewers.