Stats reveal the effect Ninja has had on Mixer so far

A new report reveals that people are spending less time watching Mixer streams than they were before Tyler ‘Twitch, Mixer and YouTube Gaming for Q3 of 2019, has been released today, giving fans of the platform and those in the industry a look at how the acquisition of Ninja has affected Mixer, and their rivals. 

If the exclusive signing of the streamer was designed to encourage more users to the platform, then things are looking good for the Microsoft-owned platform, as between Q2 and Q3, the platform has seen an increase from 1.96 million unique channels to 3.92m, a massive leap in just three months. Over time, this may well prove to be huge, if these streamers can grow in popularity and bring even more eyes to the site.

The most interesting statistic in the effort to bring more viewers to Microsoft’s streaming platform is in the number of hours watched, which has dropped by 10.6% quarter over quarter despite Ninja’s exclusivity deal starting at the beginning of August.

This is particularly confusing as the number of hours streamed has actually tripled since Q2, even overtaking YouTube Gaming for hours streamed – which would typically lead you to believe that hours watched must have increased too.

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Not only has Mixer seen a decrease from Q2 but Twitch has seen a notable increase in millions of hours watched, from 2,439.7 to 2,551.4. YouTube Gaming’s figures have also dropped, with Twitch taking interest and consumers from both its biggest competitors.

Despite this recent drop, it’s important to note that the figure for hours watched has more than doubled year-on-year for Mixer so, although Ninja may not be firing the platform above Twitch, their longterm results are definitely progressing in an upward trajectory.

While Mixer may not be dominating Twitch just yet, Ninja is unlikely to reconsider his position streaming exclusively on Mixer any time soon, especially after his wife Jessica spoke with Business Insider detailing why they decided to make the switch. She explained how Twitch consistently failed to offer a contract that made sense for the Fortnite star, and that Microsoft was so accommodating that the deal happened “in a matter of weeks”.

There are a number of takeaways from the report by Streamlabs and Newzoo – whilst Mixer and Twitch are the main points of interest here, it seems YouTube Gaming may be suffering the most as we reach the end of the year. That said, Q3 is typically the weakest part of the year for streaming platforms, so this may be why we are seeing both platforms struggling slightly.

It will be interesting to see what the Ninja move results in the longterm, and whether Mixer can return to – and improve on – their Q2 results. But, with both Fortnite and battle royale titles as a whole suffering for viewership each quarter, we may see Mixer have to adopt a new strategy going forward to take some of Twitch’s market share.