Twitch grows, but the streaming market loses hours and users in the quarter

Fewer hours watched, fewer hours broadcast and fewer people watching. This is the current scenario of the streaming, which appears to decelerate after strong growth. The situation is not as alarming as it sounds. Twitch, the industry leader, was the only one that surprisingly grew in the quarter. Rivals YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming lost ratings in the period.

The data were published in a full report about the industry by Streamlabs.

The main reason for this drop? People are living away from home again. With the return to face-to-face work and school in a more controlled post-pandemic life, many people’s choice of “pass time” is also out the door, away from a screen watching some streamer. This is what those responsible for the analysis believe; the “return to normal”.

Image: Parilov/Shutterstock

Streaming crisis?

No, not for that. It is true that the report points to a decline in growth compared to the same period last year. Still, “growing less” is better than not growing at all.

Twitch lives in another world. The industry-leading streaming platform with a 76% share of hours watched saw those same hours increase by 7.5% from the previous quarter, a total of 6.13 billion hours. The number of hours streamed on Twitch also increased in the period; plus 12%. Still, down 3.3% year-on-year.

Image: Shutterstock/Ink Drop

At YouTube Gaming (which has a 14% market share), the drop in hours watched compared to the same period in 2021 was 7.4% to 1.13 billion hours. Year-on-year, the decline is 12.4%.

On Facebook Gaming (10% share) hours watched dropped much more, to 803 million hours, down 29.6% from the previous quarter and 24.2% year-on-year.

Overall, total hours watched across all platforms remained roughly the same compared to the previous quarter. But after a year, the total hours watched on these streaming channels decreased by 8.06%.