HasanAbi hits near-record viewership for coverage of Russian invasion of Ukraine

HasanAbi is Twitch’s most popular content creator for political commentary. So when a significant world event happens, it only makes sense that people flock to his stream to stay posted on what’s going on.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine yesterday after weeks of diplomatic issues between the countries. The topic was one of many that Hasan has discussed with viewers over the course of the past few weeks. And following the latest developments, Hasan’s viewership peaked to heights he’s rarely seen.

On the evening of Wednesday, Feb. 23, with war imminent, Hasan’s viewership peaked at more than 153,000 viewers toward the end of his stream. Yesterday, after Putin spoke, Hasan’s 11-hour stream was among his most viewed all-time.

Averaging 112,234 viewers, Hasan’s stream on Thursday, Feb. 24 eclipsed a million hours watched (1.24 million) and peaked at 126,982 viewers, according to SullyGnome. He spent most of his stream discussing and following coverage of the Russia-Ukraine situation. 

While Hasan said in his stream title that he might play Elden Ring, which was released yesterday, he never got around to it. Instead, he followed developments with NATO, Russia, and Ukraine. He also watched the U.S. government’s response and coverage by various news networks, as well as posts on social media.

This stream wasn’t quite Hasan’s best stream ever. His top viewership statistics came during his coverage of domestic political situations. 

His Jan. 6 stream from last year when he followed the developments of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol following a rally by outgoing President Donald Trump is where he achieved his highest peak viewership. That stream, which lasted 14.6 hours, averaged 133,279 viewers and peaked at 231,817. In total, Hasan’s Jan. 6 stream had 1.94 million hours watched.

Hasan’s most-watched stream and highest average viewership happened during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. On Nov. 3, 2020, he averaged 157,279 viewers with a peak of 226,974 and a total of 2.5 million hours watched over 16 hours.

The appeal of Hasan’s political commentary comes in part because of the way that it is a sort of curated and crowd-sourced organization of news. Instead of watching just one news source, Hasan treats his stream as an aggregator where he pulls clips from numerous outlets as well as social media. While his commentary is left-leaning, he attempts to pull content to react to from as many places as possible to promote conversation among his community members.