Data: Twitch losing users
September 4, 2023
Although Twitch continues leading the global streaming audience with a 74 per cent market share in 2023, the community for gamers has again seen a significant drop in the number of streamers.
According to data presented by Casinos en Ligne, the total number of Twitch streamers dropped by 450,000 year-over-year, reaching 7.59 million last month.
Twitch’s Revenue Share Policy Turned Away Streamers
Twitch has been the center for content creators in the live streaming space for the last ten years. Between 2018 and 2020, the streaming platform had between three and four million streamers, according to Statista and Twitch Tracker data. But, after the Covid-19 lockdowns created a huge demand for streaming content, this figure more than doubled and hit 9.24 million at the end of 2020. In January 2021, Twitch hit an all-time high of nearly 9.9 million streamers, but it was downhill from there.
In 2021 alone, the number of streamers plunged by 1.3 million, and the negative trend continued last year. In January 2022, Twitch had more than 8.5 million streamers. By the end of the year, this figure was at 7 million.
One of the reasons behind this huge drop is Twitch’s revenue share policy. In October 2022, Twitch cut its revenue share between streamers and the platform to an even 50-50, significantly reducing creators` earnings. A few months later, the platform reintroduced a higher 70-30 split for partnered streamers but added several conditions and minimum viewership thresholds to achieve a higher percentage. Finally, two months ago, Twitch rolled out unpopular branded content changes, disallowing burned-in, banner, and audio ads and allowing on-screen logos at only 3 per cent of the screen size.
Statistics show the number of streamers on the platform dropped from 7.55 million in January to 6.82 million in May, the figure last seen in mid-2020. Although the number of streamers recovered to nearly 7.6 million since then, this still represents a 2.3 million decline from an all-time peak in January 2021.
Average Monthly Viewership Down by 200,000 Year-over-Year
Besides losing thousands of streamers, the world’s largest community for gamers has also seen a considerable drop in the monthly average viewership.
According to TwitchTracker data, the platform had an average of 2.4 million viewers in August, or 200,000 less than in the same month a year ago.
On the other hand, the average number of channels increased year-over-year, rising from roughly 91,100 in August 2022 to 94,100 last month. Statistics also show Twitch has been watched for 843 billion minutes year-to-date, or 4.3 per cent more than in the same period last year.