Twitch still dominates livestreaming despite mass YouTube Gaming investment

New reports are out that show just how much Twitch continues to dominate the livestreaming space, despite huge investments from rivals such as YouTube and Facebook Gaming.

Twitch has long been the go-to for streamers both new and established. It’s commonly seen as the original livestreaming platform and is built entirely around live creators and discovering your favorite streamers.

Throughout recent years, though, there has been growing pressure from rival platforms. The two biggest — YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming — have made big-money offers to some top Twitch streamers across multiple genres to coax them away.

We’ve seen names like TimTheTatman, Ludwig, DisguisedToast, and Dr Disrespect wind up on rival platforms over time (though Toast eventually made his way back), but by the looks of it, it’s not having quite as much impact as intended.

Twitch viewership eclipses YouTube & Facebook

While each platform has its merits and redeeming factors, in viewership alone, neither really hold much of a candle to Twitch at all.

• Read More: Top 20 Twitch Streamers: Most followed channels

As shown in the graph below from StreamHatchet, Twitch accounted for around 71% of total streaming hours in 2021. It averaged out to around 6 billion hours watched per quarter of 2021, while YouTube and Facebook both hovered around 1.1-1.3bn per quarter.

Interestingly, though, YouTube was the only platform to show a decrease in viewership year-on-year, between Q2-Q4.

Twitch streamers remain on top

Not only that, but all of the top 10 most viewed streamers were on Twitch, too. Despite the big names on YouTube, none of them were able to collate as much viewership as Twitch’s top stars.

xQc led the way, to the surprise of nobody, with 272m hours watched — miles ahead of second-place Gaules, who accrued 165m hours watched.

While there was no question of Twitch’s dominance over the livestreaming space, these stats prove just how much of a grip they still have on both streamers and viewers.

In 2022, YouTube and Facebook will be looking to find the best ways to decrease this gap as much as possible.