Twitch has become quite a success over the past few years, with a large base of viewers and its own devoted convention (in addition to appearances at other ones). The good news keeps on streaming in, as the company posted its record numbers for the past year in a new blog post.
The post is highly detailed, and includes information about what games were popular on the service (like Fallout 4 and Rocket League), as well as its growing access on mobile. 35 percent of audience accounted for mobile, with over one million app installs.
A lot of people tuned in
An estimated 241 billion minutes were streamed over the past year, with an average of 550,000 concurrent viewers with live video. Considering that the service has over 1.7 million broadcasters streaming on a regular basis, that’s an immense number to consider. In addition, Twitch users spend 421.6 minutes a month watching streams, compared to YouTube Gaming’s paltry 291 minutes.
It’s not just popular in the United States
Twitch’s outreach has expanded immensely across a number of regions, including Canada, Brazil, Russia, Taiwan and even Antarctica. Apparently, penguins are big fans of livestreaming.
Millions were in a charitable mood
Twitch reported that, at its peak, a total of nearly three million viewers (2,098,529, to be precise) tuned in, while 35,610 streamers worked consecutively during November. This was when many gamers were taking part in the 24-hour Extra Life charity, and viewership bumped up as a result.
Over the course of the year, Twitch and its partners managed to raise $17.4 million across over 55 different charities, with Extra Life taking an easy lead with over seven million dollars.
League of Legends still rules
The top ten list of most streamed games are:
- League of Legends
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- DOTA 2
- Hearthstone
- Minecraft
- H1Z1
- Destiny
- World of Tanks
- World of Warcraft
- FIFA 15
Game launches were also popular on the service, as Destiny: The Taken King, Fallout 4 and Rocket League saw huge numbers on their debuts. In fact, Bloomberg reported that Fallout specifically “had about 10x as many viewers as YouTube Gaming during the crucial period shortly after the game came out.”
eSports gained a critical audience
A number of eSports related tournaments found great exposure on Twitch. For instance, the ESL One – CS: Go competition saw 27 million unique viewers on Twitch, and the annual EVO and The International tournaments also saw a high count of virtual audience members.
Interaction was key
Along with a large community of streamers, Twitch benefitted from its interactive chat service, with nearly 10 billion messages sent throughout the year – calculating to 17,446 a minute. eMotes were also highly popular on the channel, with the company’s trademark “Kappaross” image (to celebrate the debut of the artistic Bob Ross channel) being used almost four million times.
TwitchCon was a massive success
Along with gaining a huge amount of attendance in person, TwitchCon was also considered a hit virtually, as nearly two million people tuned in to see their favorite streamers and games from the event. That all but guarantees that it will be back again this year.
“2015 saw the Twitch community come together in more ways than we ever thought possible. Thank you to everyone who broadcasted, viewed, lurked, chatted, cringed, celebrated, and laughed with us this past year. Here’s to more in 2016!” the company posted.