Twitch viewership tops 1.9B in January thanks to esports, Palword | StreamElements

Twitch viewers watched 1.902 billion hours of content in January, according to StreamElements’ latest State of the Stream Report. Per Rainmaker.gg’s data, January’s viewership is up 6% which gives Twitch the highest monthly total since Q2 2023.

January’s daily viewership averaged 61.4 million hours watched. This means viewers watched 3.7 million more hours per day in January compared to December. Similarly, this is a new average daily viewership record for the Amazon-owned games livestreaming service.

“It is promising to see Twitch achieving a new peak with five consecutive months of growth in daily hours watched. However, it is too soon to know if the broader gaming audience is finally embracing the platform as January always attracts more viewers than December,” said Or Perry, cofounder of StreamElements. “With more creators embracing multi-streaming, such as Pokimane going platform-agnostic, it is only a matter of time before the positive impact of pulling in more viewers from different apps is felt on Twitch.”

Esports, GTA VI, Palworld drove viewership

Generally speaking, most of Twitch’s top categories saw viewership boosts in January. Fortnite is the only category in the top 10 to see viewership declines. However, this 35% pullback is somewhat expected after Epic pulled players back in with Fortnite OG and Lego Fortnite in November and December.

Battlestate Games’ Escape from Tarkov saw the biggest boost — up 180% — amongst the top categories. The extraction shooter held its latest wipe event on December 27, 2023, resparking interest in the title. The biannual wipe events reset player progress, which invites new and lapsed players back to Tarkov. On top of this, the extraction shooter incentivized more viewership through Twitch drops to celebrate the new year.

Grand Theft Auto V also saw a nice bump in January. The trailer for the highly anticipated sequel dropped in December, sparking 60% more viewership that month alongside sales. Impressively, these gains carried through to January, rather than trending back towards baseline.

The several of Twitch’s top categories — League of Legends, Valorant, Counter-Strike and Dota 2 — saw significant boosts thanks to esports resuming. Riot’s titles kicked off their regular seasons, though Valorant saw an additional boost from an invitational hosted by creators Ludwig and Tarik. In comparison, Valve’s titles held qualifiers for upcoming Majors. Counter-Strike was preparing for PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 and Blast Premier while Dota 2 honed in on BetBoom Dacha Dubai 2024 and ESL One Birmingham.

Finally, Palworld has set the bar for 2024 game launches on Twitch with an impressive 59 million hours watched in January. Its launch week viewership of 40 million wasn’t enough to eclipse Diablo IV’s 70 million, but puts it comfortably between Hogwarts Legacy’s 50 million and Baldur’s Gate 3’s 22 million.

Twitch’s top creators in January

While Japan’s fps_shaka didn’t pass his 13 million hours watched in December 2023, he still held on to his title as Twitch’s most watched streamer in January. He primarily streamed Grand Theft Auto V, but he also played Street Fighter 6 and Palworld. Notably, fps_shaka also increased his broadcast time to 330 hours, but this did not translate to increased average viewership.

Gaules narrowly missed out on the top spot with 9.7 million hours watched. The Brazilian streamer broadcasted for nearly the entire month, with 740 hours of airtime. The majority of his viewership was earned via co-streams of major Counter-Strike tournaments.

January also marked the first time Caseoh_ broke into the rankings. His 6.5 million hours of viewership last month is up nearly 67% from his December total. However, exponential growth isn’t a new trend for caseoh_, who began streaming regularly in September 2022. His TikTok following has enabled caseoh_ to build his monthly Twitch viewership from 47,000 hours watched to 6.5 million in 16 months.