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Twitch viewership has surged worldwide during COVID-19, says StreamElements & Arsenal.gg

According to a new State of the Stream data report from StreamElements and Arsenal.gg, Twitch viewership has skyrocketed over 50% since the coronavirus pandemic began.

TJ Denzer

July 24, 2020 10:40 AM

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With the COVID-19 pandemic keeping a lot of people in-doors and careful about what they do, there’s been a lot of time to catch up on shows or watch some livestreaming. According to a recent State of the Stream data report from StreamElements and Arsenal.gg, this may very well be the recent for a rampant surge in Twitch viewership worldwide, with recent months showing a more than 50% increase in viewership over the months before the coronavirus pandemic became official worldwide.

Livestream tool development and production company StreamElements and livestreaming data and analytics platform Arsenal.gg launched their latest State of the Stream data report on July 23, 2020. The report is illuminating to a lot of major changes within the livestreaming ecosystem since the COVID-19 pandemic began. In general, Twitch viewership worldwide saw a 56% growth from Q1 to Q2 2020. Q2 saw a super massive stat of over 1.8 billion peak hours watched. It wasn’t confined only to Twitch either. Facebook Gaming has also seen a spurt of over 75% growth from Q1 to Q2.

Some other details from the report include an increase in certain categories being watched on Twitch. Just Chatting, for instance, has seen a massive climb from where it began earlier in 2020, and it was climbing up the Twitch categories even then in previous reports. Where Just Chatting pulled in around 86 million hours watched in January, it amassed a huge 167 million hours in June 2020 - a 94% increase. League of Legends has also seen a climb from 94 million to 135 million, January to June 2020. It should come as no surprise that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare saw another one of the most massive climbs - 7 million in January to 76 million hours in June. This can be largely attributed to the launch of its battle royale component, Call of Duty: Warzone, launching around March and bringing massive attention to the game from viewers and players alike.

One thing is for sure. With the COVID-19 pandemic still ongoing, more people are staying in and watching hours upon hours of Twitch than ever before. That doesn’t seem like its about to change anytime soon as long as dangers of the coronavirus continue to be a thing.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.