Twitch adds 3.5 million new streamers this year, records a growth of 87% YTD
Data acquired by Finbold.com shows that video live streaming service Twitch added 3.5 million streamers between January and May 2020. The growth represents 87.81%, an all-time high.
Twitch recorded all-time high streamers in May
At the end of January, Twitch had 3.94 million streamers but slightly dropped in February to 3.75 million. In March, the streamers skyrocketed by 35.4% to 5.08 million and by April they hit 7.21 million. In May streamers stood at 7.4 million a growth of about 2.6% from the previous month.
Between 2018 and 2020, the streamers were lowest in February 2018 at 2.89 million but later rose to 3.7 million in March. In January 2018, the streamers stood at 2.97 million representing a growth of 149.16% to the current figure. Twitch recorded a significant number of streamers in January 2019 at 4.54 million, the highest before the 2020 spike. From this point, the streamers declined to hit a yearly low of 2.94 million in 2019.
The global pandemic has contributed to the Twitch rise in streamers. According to the Finbold.com report :
"Notably, the rise in Twitch streamers was an all-time high figure thanks to coronavirus lockdown that meant most people had to stay at home. During this period, movie theaters were closed with no live sports leaving video-game streaming platforms as an option for entertainment."
The Finbold.com research also overviewed the top most-watched games on Twitch by the first week of June 2020 based on hours. Just Chatting is leading with 43.2 million hours in views followed by League of Legends at 30.9 million hours while GTA 5 is fifth at 24.9 million hours. Fornite emerged fourth with 24.8 million hours while COD : Modern Warfare is fifth with 18.4 million hours in views.
Other most viewed games include CS : GO (18.2 million hours), Valorant (16.5 million hours), Dota 2 (10.1 million hours), Minecraft (9.84 million hours), and FIFA 20 (8.65 million hours).