TimTheTatman leverages new titles to increase average viewership in 2019

TimTheTatman’s career as a streamer has evolved over the course of many years by moving from one popular game to the next. In 2019, playing a variety of titles helped him achieve year-over-year growth in average viewership.

Despite streaming fewer hours and having fewer followers than he did in 2018, Tim averaged more than 21,000 viewers, according to data recorded by TwitchTracker.com. That figure is an increase from a little bit more than 20,000 last year.

The increase in average viewership came with a decrease in total hours watched on Twitch. His 38.8 million hours watched this year is down from 41.5 million last year. Tim also saw a year-over-year decrease in followers as well, dropping to 1.01 million from 1.82 million.

With daily activity being a significant factor for streamers in maintaining followers and posting large hours watched totals, Tim’s decline in those categories was highly affected by the 21 fewer days that he streamed and the more than 200 fewer hours streamed.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about TimTheTatman’s year, however, was his variety. In the past, his stream has grown because of his ability to latch onto popular games like Fortnite, CS:GO, and Overwatch to grow his stream.

This year, though, Tim has been a top streamer across multiple games. While Fortnite was his most-played game with 832 hours of airtime, he streamed World of Warcraft for more than 200 hours, with much of that stream time coming after the release of Classic.

Additionally, Tim had more than 100 hours of airtime devoted to a few first-person shooters: Apex Legends and Call of Duty. This is a change from 2018 when the charismatic influencer only played two titles for more than 100 hours.

Last year, Tim streamed more than 1,000 hours of Fortnite and the only title that he played for more than 100 hours outside of that was Overwatch, which was his primary game prior to Fortnite’s explosion in the spring of 2018.

Despite the growth of “Just Chatting” in its first full year as a category on Twitch, Tim streamed about the same amount of the category this year as he did IRL (Just Chatting’s predecessor) and Just Chatting in 2018.

Tim is known for spending the first segment of his stream talking to his chatroom and watching or listening to whatever short links they send to him in the form of donations. But it seems as if he was ahead of the curve in that category. While many streamers increased their use of non-gameplay related content, Tim’s average viewership for it this year, 11,750 viewers, was only a modest improvement from where he ended last year. He averaged 11,270 viewers for the last three months of the year after Just Chatting was introduced to Twitch.

Tim capped the year by announcing this month that he planned to stay with Twitch in what was reported to be a multiyear streaming deal. His decision to stay followed shroud and Ninja’s moves to Mixer earlier this year.

Though his hours watched totals aren’t in the same realm as influencers like shroud or Ninja, the standards that they’ve set for exclusive streaming deals with platforms have made streamers like Tim a commodity.

In the coming year, it’s not a guarantee that Tim will see any sort of notable growth. But compared to other streamers who are known for playing one game in particular, his versatility as an influencer who can play multiple games and maintain a stable viewership base makes him an asset to Twitch.