Throughout the second quarter of 2023, Twitch and YouTube remained the powerhouses of the live-streaming industry. However, moving into the summer months neither YouTube nor Twitch saw a positive growth in their dynamics. Kick, the new streaming platform around, saw a huge increase coming into this quarter.
Streaming metrics of Hours Watched for Q2 2023 (April-June) of major live streaming platforms
Main takeaways:
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May was the busiest month for streaming platforms
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Twitch and YouTube Live remain as top platforms despite a slight decrease
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YouTube Gaming increased to 18% share of overall YouTube Live watch time
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Kick grows 216% in its second full quarter per Hours Watched
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Bigo LIVE has its worst quarter ever
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Nonolive continues to improve stats after experiencing the largest growth in Q1 2023
Twitch Viewer Statistics in Q2 2023
During Q2 of 2023, Twitch collected 5.18B Hours Watched, a statistically insignificant decrease of 1.77% from Q1. Although Twitch suffered from this decrease, the platform remains stable and popular among both creators and their audience. Streamers like KaiCenat, who was the most watched Twitch channel of Q1 2023, streamed less on Twitch during Q2 and did not make the top five for Q2.
The top category on Twitch for Q2 2023 remained Just Chatting, with League of Legends following closely behind. The first change on the list since Q1, Valorant overtook Grand Theft Auto V for the third top spot, surely helped along by VCT 2023: Masters Tokyo. Totally new to the list is CS:GO, making the top five on top of the success of the BLAST.tv Major. Last quarter the ESL_CSGO Twitch channel made the top five channel list, but the final CS:GO Major saw a huge chunk of the community enjoying community casts and co-streams of the event.
With KaiCenat’s focus elsewhere, xQc took the top spot of the most-watched channels of Q2. Portuguese streamer Gaules also moved from fourth to second in our rankings. The Portuguese creator was one of the most-watched community channels for the BLAST.tv Paris Major. Tarik and ibai also made the cut. Finally, Fextralife made the top five channels for Q2 carried by the release of Diablo IV. Fextralife streamed every day of Q2 and amassed over 1000 hours of Airtime, with over 80% of their watch time dedicated to the new dungeon-crawler.
YouTube Live Viewer Statistics in Q2 2023
Dissimilar to Twitch for this quarter, YouTube Live saw a significant decrease in viewership in Q2 2023. YouTube Live saw 6% fewer Hours Watched compared to Q1 of this year. While 6% might not sound like a lot, when you account for YouTube Live’s huge presence in the market this comes to almost half a billion fewer Hours Watched this quarter.
For Q2 2023, YouTube Live enjoyed 7.62B Hours Watched with a larger portion of this being due to YouTube Gaming. Heading into Q1 of this year, YouTube Gaming saw its impact increase from 15% of total Hours Watched to 17%, and heading into Q2 of 2023 this increased again to 18%.
The second month of Q2 was the most successful for YouTube Live in terms of Hours Watched, a break from last quarter where the third month was their most successful. Categories on YouTube Live remained the same, with Gaming being one of the top categories, but still edged out by Entertainment and News & Politics.
Kick Viewer Statistics in Q2 2023
Kick is a newly released American live-streaming platform. Q1 of 2023 was the first quarterly report for the site and now that Q2 is over we can start making comparisons of its dynamics. Last quarter, the final month of the quarter was the most watched due to the release of Kick’s mobile app. June, the final month of Q2, also saw a significant increase in viewership, with a rise of 44% for Hours Watched and several stars jumping to the platform. Celebrities such as Drake, xQc, Ninja, and Amouranth all took the platform for June.
Kick continues to explode in popularity during the third month of the quarter. Slots & Casino and Just Chatting continue to be the two main categories for this platform with Adin Ross continuing to be the most popular live streamer on the platform by a wide margin. If you’re more interested in what happened with Kick in June of this year, check out our dedicated article.
Nimo TV Viewer Statistics in Q2 2023
Nimo TV maintained a stable platform for this quarter, with only a slight decrease in Hours Watched. Although April was one of the platform's most successful months, June was a weak month for the platform, performing worse than any month in Q1 of this year.
The Southeast-Asian platform’s boost in April may have been due to the Nimo TV Global Gala. The platform's award show drew in huge viewership, even becoming one of the most-watched live streams of all time [LINK ARTICLE]. This led to the official NIMO GALA 2023 channel becoming one of the site's most popular. Viewership remains high in Vietnam with games like Grand Theft Auto V and League of Legends dominating the platform’s viewership.
AfreecaTV Viewer Statistics in Q2 2023
AfreecaTV experienced a 3% drop in viewership compared to the last quarter, collecting 285M Hours Watched for Q2. South Korean viewership for the site remains dominant, games which are hugely popular in Korea like League of Legends and StarCraft: Remastered retained their top spots on the platform. Interestingly, AfreecaTV is the only platform covered for which a football game was one of the most popular games of the quarter. FIFA Online 4 was originally released in Korea in 2018 and has been one of the most popular football games in Asia since.
Bigo LIVE Viewer Statistics in Q2 2023
Despite being the largest growing platform per Hours Watched in Q4 2022, Bigo LIVE saw a downturn of 18% in Q1 2023, now followed by a downturn of 57% for Q2 2023. The platform garnered only 53M Hours Watched, a drop of over 70M Hours Watched compared to last quarter.
Although Bigo LIVE is owned by a Chinese company, the platform is most popular among Arabic communities. Arabic viewership makes up for the majority of all Hours Watched on the site for this quarter. Mobile games were also prevalent at the top of the most-watched Categories on the site, Free Fire took the top spot with PUBG Mobile following close behind.
Trovo Viewer Statistics in Q2 2023
Trovo saw another decrease in its viewership coming into Q2 of this year. Already in Q1 2023 Trovo saw a decrease to 42.9M Hours Watched. However, this quarter, the platform saw a larger decrease of 18%. The Q2 2023 statistics for Trovo remain the lowest performers for the platform in well over a year.
Of note, the most watched channels for Q2 2023 are completely different from those in Q1. The most-watched categories remain similar, although Free Fire took the top spot as the most-watched mobile game, dethroning Call of Duty: Mobile which was the most-watched mobile game of Q1 2023.
Nonolive Viewer Statistics in Q2 2023
Whereas other established platforms have been struggling with growth for this quarter, Nonolive remains one of the rare platforms to experience growth not only in Q1 but also in Q2 of 2023. Experiencing a growth of 1.35% in Q1, the platform boomed up to 29M Hours Watched this quarter, an increase of 9%. Mobile games continue to dominate the platform, with PUBG Mobile continuing to be the most-watched game of the quarter. Other mobile games such as Brawl Stars and Free Fire continue to also be popular.
Mildom Viewer Statistics in Q2 2023
Mildom accrued 4.6M Hours Watched in Q2 2023. The Japanese streaming platform saw a decrease of 13% compared to Q1, which was already 21% lower than Q4 2022. Battle Royale games continue to be popular, especially mobile ones. PUBG Mobile once again was hugely popular, however compared to Q1 of 2023 Apex Legends is now the only non-mobile game to make the top five. Fortnite PC was present last quarter but has been replaced through the growth of talk shows and other content not related directly to gaming.
If you’re interested in comparing these statistics directly to Q1 viewership, check out our article for Q1 of this year.