Livestreaming continued to grow across almost all platforms in 2021, with both Twitch and Facebook Gaming showing around 45 percent year-over-year growth compared to 2020.
For Twitch, that growth saw the platform increase from 17 billion hours watched in 2020 to 24 billion hours in 2021. Facebook Gaming actually showed slightly more growth, with a 47 percent growth rate for the year after going from 3.6 billion to 5.3 billion hours watched, according to Rainmaker, StreamElements’ analytics partner.
Just Chatting was by far the most popular category on Twitch throughout 2021, bringing in a total of 3.1 billion hours watched. That is more than 1 billion hours more than the second-place title, Grand Theft Auto V, and 1.3 billion hours more than League of Legends in the third spot. Fortnite was the only other title to crack the 1 billion hours watched mark, with VALORANT rounding out the top five at around 949 million hours watched.
Individually, xQc remained atop the Twitch ecosystem for a second straight year with more than 261 million hours watched across 2021. That total is up from 143.6 million hours watched in 2020 as the king retains his crown.
The remainder of the top 10 streamers in terms of hours watched in 2021 shuffled around quite a bit compared to 2020, with only six names remaining from the previous year. Gaules dropped from second place to third, with loud_coringa taking that second spot behind xQc, while shroud returned to the list and both MontanaBlack88 and HasanAbi joined the ranks.
In addition to Twitch and Facebook Gaming, YouTube Gaming noted the platform had 800 billion gaming-related views, over 90 million hours live-streamed, and over 250 million uploads in the first half of 2021, though end-of-year figures have yet to be released.
StreamElements also partnered with Streams Charts to publish detailed numbers on upcoming streaming platform Trovo, which saw a 715 percent jump in viewership during Q3 2021, jumping to 73 million hours watched and continuing its quarter-over-quarter growth that hasn’t slowed down since the platform’s beta launched in July 2020.
