Today, StreamElements and its partner, analytics firm Rainmaker.gg, published the February issue of their “State of the Stream” report. This is something of a fascinating document, because as the end of the pandemic approaches, it is further proof that live platforms were one of the winners of the crisis. (You know, if we accept that there could be winners of a global mass death event.)
The biggest finding in this month’s report is that twitch and Facebook Gaming, in terms of selected hours, are up about 80 percent year-on-year. To be more specific: Twitch grew by 82 percent, while Facebook Gaming grew by 79 percent. For Twitch, that means more than 1.8 billion hours of waiting time in February; On the other hand, Facebook Gaming has cleaned up 400 million hours. (For reference: in March 2020, when the pandemic began, Twitch cleared 1.1 billion viewing hours. And in April last year, Facebook Gaming watched 291 million hours.)
These figures are both massive and, in my opinion, durable: both figures are actually a decrease from January, which was a longer month. To me, this indicates that the total number of people watching live streams has increased significantly in the course of the global coronavirus pandemic.
That said, the numbers do not reflect the ongoing explosion of vaccines – which have recently started to increase exponentially in the US. I would be interested to see if the numbers drop as the world looks normal again. Even if they do, this hellish season of our lives has has pulled live streaming firmly into the mainstream as a practice.