Mentioned in this article
- Streamlabs and Newzoo released their quarterly live streaming industry report.
- Hours streamed have tripled and unique channels streaming has doubled on Mixer from last quarter.
- The boost in streaming on Mixer comes following Tyler “Ninja” Blevins’ exclusive deal to stream on Microsoft’s streaming platform.
Following Tyler “Ninja” Blevins’ exit from Twitch earlier this summer in favor of an exclusive deal to stream on Mixer, Microsoft’s streaming platform has seen a boost to its activity, but not in hours watched.
According to the Q3 livestream industry report by Streamlabs and Newzoo, Mixer has seen its hours streamed triple quarter-over-quarter, and the number of unique channels streaming on the platform has doubled.
However, despite a boost to the platform’s activity, Mixer has actually experienced a quarter-over-quarter decline in total hours watched. Newzoo data shows that the platform’s 90.2M hours watched in Q3 represents a 10.6% decline in hours watched from Q2. That being said, the figure is still more than double the hours watched the platform had in Q3 2018 (43.5M).
With a boost to activity and decline in hours watched, it could be expected that Mixer would see a drop in average viewership as well from Q2. The platform’s 40.8K average CCV was down 11.7% from last quarter, which can be attributed to the increase in hours streamed and unique channels streaming.
Meanwhile, the increase in activity on Mixer hasn’t seemed to negatively affect Twitch, which serves as the most popular gaming-endemic live streaming platform.
After experiencing a quarter-over-quarter decline in hours watched in Q2, the platform saw an increase in hours watched from Q2 to Q3 despite a decline in total hours streamed. The platform’s 2.55B hours watched in Q3 was up from 2.44B in Q2. The figure was also up from 2.28B hours watched in Q3 last year.
A decline in unique channels and hours streamed on Twitch in Q3 from Q2 represents a trend for the platform. Twitch also experienced a quarter-over-quarter decline in both unique channels and hours streamed in Q2. While hours streamed in Q3 (87.3M) was still up year-over-year from 84.2M, unique channels in Q3 (3.77M) was down from 4.71M in 2018.
Though there are fewer unique channels and hours being streamed on Twitch, the platform’s increase in hours watched represents an increase in audience despite a decrease in streamers. The growth of the audience is also made evident by an increase in average concurrent viewers by 3.5% to 1.16M. The figure represents both a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year improvement.
While Blevins’ move to Mixer could potentially be seen as one of the major contributing factors in the platform’s increased hours of streaming, Twitch still serves as the dominant gaming-endemic platform for livestreaming as is made evident by changes in average viewership and total hours watched on both platforms.
