The analytical company Newzoo compared the performance of the largest streaming platforms Twitch and YouTube Gaming in the 1st quarter of 2018. Twitch leads by a margin in the main parameters, but in some indicators YouTube Gaming is catching up and even overtaking its competitor.
Statistical material with the authors’ comments is published on the Nezoo website.
Twitch vs YouTube Gaming
In the first quarter of 2018, users of both platforms viewed a total of 2.4 billion hours of game streams.
- Twitch – 2 billion hours;
- YouTube Gaming – 481 million hours.
Distribution of the audience of platforms
YouTube Gaming viewers are focused on the most popular channels of the service.
The top 10 YouTube Gaming channels generated 18% of all views, and the top 100 channels generated 42% of views.
The Twitch audience is more sparse: the top 100 Twitch channels account for about 30% of all views.
What games do people like to watch on Twitch and YouTube Gaming
The viewers of both stream platforms are almost equally fond of shooters, action-adventure films and MOBA. They are preferred by 69% of YouTube Gaming users and 61% of Twitch visitors.
In other genres, the tastes of audiences vary. Twitch is ahead of YouTube Gaming in terms of watching streams of fighting games, card butlers and role—playing (including MMO) games.
But YouTube Gaming viewers are more likely to watch streams of casual and mobile titles than Twitch users do.
There is not a single mobile game in the top 20 popular Twitch games, whereas YouTube Gaming has as many as 5 of them. These are Mobile Legends, Clash Royale, Arena of Valor, Garena RoV and Monster Strike.
Streams of popular titles
The total broadcast time of the 20 most popular games on both platforms is distributed as follows:
- 82% of streams on Twitch
- 18% of streams on YouTube Gaming
YouTube Gaming is ahead of its competitor in viewing titles such as World of Tanks, Minecraft and Mobile Legends.
Content Creators
There are more than 65 thousand channels on Twitch, streams on which at least 50 people watch at the same time.
There are only 25 thousand channels with similar audience activity on YouTube Gaming.
Despite this, the channels of some games are equally popular on both platforms.
According to Newzoo, YouTube Gaming has 3 of the most popular channels with Minecraft streams and 7 out of 10 channels with FIFA 18 in terms of the number of simultaneous viewers.
Esports
Esports generated 11% of all views on Twitch and YouTube in the 1st quarter of 2018.
Of this time, broadcasts from professional competitions accounted for 11.6% on Twitch and 8.2% on YouTube Gaming.
Esports activity on Twitch, NewzooAlso on the topic:
The base of active YouTube Gaming streamers has grown by 343 over the year%