The streaming industry as a whole experienced an increase to 1.18 billion hours watched year-over-year in December, according to research performed by StreamElements and Arsenal. That’s a 12-percent increase from 1.07 billion hours watched in 2018.
While Twitch saw its viewership go up year-over-year, data shows that Facebook Gaming and YouTube saw more impressive year-over-year growth. Twitch had 727 million hours watched, up from 716 million in 2018, excluding non-gaming categories.
Facebook Gaming saw the most growth with 102 million hours watched, up from just under 33 million in December 2018. This comes following the move of Disguised Toast from Twitch to Facebook Gaming. Meanwhile, YouTube saw year-over-year growth in December as well with 332.9 million hours watched, up from 293 million.
After locking down two of the biggest content creators in gaming, Mixer also saw a year-over-year increase in hours watched for the month. The report showed that Mixer had 31 million hours watched in December, up from 24.4 million hours watched, excluding non-gaming categories.
The change in viewership for Mixer, according to StreamElements’ data, came as shroud and Ninja combined to provide 370 hours of airtime on the platform. While on Twitch, the two influencers were among the most-watched streamers in the industry.
Additionally, Just Chatting led all categories on Twitch for the first time in December with 80.1 million hours watched, according to StreamElements. That figure outperformed League of Legends and Fortnite, which had 74 million and 58 million hours watched respectively.
Correction Jan. 9 2:15pm CT: The original version of this story had an incorrect number from StreamLabs’ report for Mixer’s hours watched in December. This article has been updated with the correct figure.
