Streamlabs Q4 report shows Twitch slowing down, while Mixer gains steam

Twitch might be at the top of the totem pole among streaming platforms, but Q4 data released by Streamlabs suggests that it may be losing a little bit of its lead. 

Research published by Streamlabs and Newzoo today shows that while Twitch is the leading platform in terms of both hours streamed and hours watched in 2019, it saw a slight year-over-year decline in hours watched from Q4 last year to 2.299 billion hours watched. In Q4 last year, the platform had 2.333 billion hours watched. 

The decline came with a dip in hours streamed on the platform. The platform’s 82.7 million hours streamed in Q4 was down from 86 million year-over-year.

Meanwhile, Mixer has seen year-over-year growth in both aspects following the move of Ninja and shroud from Twitch. The platform’s Q4 hours watched was 82.5 million, up from 62.1 million hours watched in 2018. 

Mixer’s hours streamed has also grown exponentially to 28.4 million hours of airtime, up from 7.7 million in Q4 of 2018. The site had a rise in the number of unique channels to 3.6 million, up from Q4 2018 when it had 1.5 million. 

Despite Mixer’s growth year-over-year, the platform has seen a decline in hours watched and streamed from Q3 when it saw its most hours streamed following the arrival of Ninja and shroud. 

YouTube Gaming Live didn’t get the same influx of star power that Mixer did, but the addition of CouRage from Twitch helped the platform jump quarter-over-quarter to 909.1 million hours watched, up from 675.9 million hours watched.

The growth in hours watched came with a jump in hours streamed as well. The platform’s 12.3 million hours streamed in Q4 was an improvement from Q3. Due to the way that data was collected for YouTube Gaming Live in 2018, Streamlabs was unable to publish complete figures to give year-over-year comparisons.

Despite recent gains, Mixer and YouTube Gaming Live still have a long way to go before competing with the overall viewership and streaming numbers that Twitch produces. But with a war between platforms that has influencers bouncing around from one service to another, figures suggest that the future perhaps isn’t as monopolistic as it has been in the past with Twitch dominating.