Over the past several years, Twitch has undergone significant growth in terms of viewership. Year over year, millions of new viewers and content creators have joined the website and turned the livestreaming platform into one of the most viewed video hosting websites in the world.
This year has been a landmark one for Twitch, with more individually-viewed streamers than ever before. Breaking many of the website’s records and bringing unprecedented levels of viewership to the platform, these are the most viewed streams of 2022.
Ibai РLa Velada Del A̱o II (13 million hours watched)
Ibai is undoubtedly one of the premier content creators on Twitch. The Spaniard is by far the most viewed streamer on the platform, accruing 13 million hours watched and 450,000 average viewers per stream in 2022 so far, according to Stream Charts. While creating unparalleled content for years at this point, Ibai’s second annual boxing event, La Velada Del Año II, shattered viewership metrics.
The boxing event featured some of the most viewed content creators in the Spanish-speaking community across YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok. Before the main event, La Velada Del Año II surpassed 3 million concurrent viewers. This incredible peak broke the previous record set by TheGrefg and also aided Twitch in reaching a new all-time concurrent viewership peak for the website as a whole.
Riot Games – League of Legends Worlds finals (6.1 million hours watched)
League of Legends has consistently been the biggest esport in the world, so it only makes sense that it would produce the most viewership for a singular stream of any big-time competitive gaming event. Along with breaking the tournament’s peak viewership record, the grand finals of Worlds 2022 between T1 and DRX proved to be highly entertaining.
As far as Twitch specifically is concerned, the Riot Games stream, which lasted nine and a half hours, averaged 641,948 viewers and peaked at just under a million viewers. While it can’t compare to Ibai’s broadcast that led all others this year, it had decidedly more viewership than all of the others below.
FextraLife – Lost Ark Western release (4.17 million hours watched)
Lost Ark is an online MMORPG that saw a massively successful Western release on Feb. 11, 2022. The category quickly rose as one of the most viewed sections on Twitch, also breaking Steam’s concurrent player record, and has maintained a prominent status on the livestreaming platform ever since.
FextraLife is a gaming website that capitalized off of Lost Ark’s historic release, being the most viewed channel on the day of release. Offering a special in-game drop during the stream, the stream amassed over 219,000 concurrent viewers and 4.17 million hours watched, according to Stream Charts.
Squeezie – GP Explorer content creator race (3.98 million hours watched)
Squeezie isn’t among the most well-known content creators on Twitch, but when he put together a one-of-a-kind event by having content creators partake in a Formula 4 race on Circuit Bugatti in Sarthe, France, he turned a lot of heads.
The race included 22 French streamers and YouTubers divided into teams of two, and it attracted a massive audience for a 10-hour stream that averaged more than 200,000 viewers, peaking at more than one million viewers.
TheGrefg – Esland Awards (3.69 million hours watched)
On Jan. 17, TheGrefg started the year off strong by hosting the Esland Awards on his Twitch channel. This event focusing on Spanish content creators featured some of the most popular figures in the community gathering together for the first time in a fan-voted award show.
The star-studded stream rivaled some of TheGrefg’s most-viewed broadcasts, peaking at 1.06 million viewers and averaging over 630,000 concurrent viewers. While eventually overshadowed by several of the higher-up streams on this list, TheGrefg’s 3.69 million hours watched set an extremely high bar for 2022’s streams.
FextraLife – Lost Ark (3.49 million hours watched)
Gaming website FextraLife saw a second massive stream only days after the Western release of MMORPG Lost Ark. Though it wasn’t as highly viewed as the channel’s first Lost Ark broadcast, the advertisement of another in-game drop brought over 255,000 viewers to the livestream and accounted for over 3.49 million hours watched by the end.
