The Twitch audience from Russian-speaking countries might split over the military conflict in Ukraine: after all, the very existence of the streaming platform in Russia is now hanging in balance. And this will be a blow to the still-emerging market, given that before it was not constrained by international politics.
Over the past few years, the Russian-language Twitch saw the formation of streamer associations which include all the most popular creators from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and other countries of Eastern Europe (the former CIS). Streams Charts analyzed the statistics of the top Russian-speaking Twitch teams for 2021.
Disclaimer: The list doesn't include esports-related communities, such as Maincast & Team Spirit. Also, we did not include the Gamers Club team in the analysis, where VooDoosh (who's also the leader of "Rabotyagi") accounts for almost half of the total Hours Watched: GC slightly outperformed 89SQUAD by the metric in 2021.
General indicators of top teams
At the end of last year, the streamer agency Streamers Alliance, part of the METACORP group, became the leader in terms of viewership: in 2021, their streamers generated more than 90M Hours Watched.
The result of the Streamers Alliance is 21% higher than that of the closest pursuer: the second in terms of the metric was FREAK, an association of streamers formed around Evelone192 and Buster. However, this same team was ahead of SA in terms of the followers gain for the year: 4.6M versus 2M. In addition, “Freaks” became leaders in other metrics.
The third spot went to “Rabotyagi” – a Twitch team consisting of the platform’s old-timers with a long-established core audience (something that is confirmed by insignificant followers gain per year). During the year, only 19 channels streamed on behalf of the team (half as much as SA), but they generated 55.9M Hours Watched, which is only 25% less than the result of the “Freaks” and 38% less than that of Streamers Alliance.
Holding the fourth spot in terms of Hours Watched is the 89SQUAD team, created by bratishkinoff. This group of streamers is aimed to not only help the newcomers but also to develop useful projects and tools in the media sphere. For example, the 89SQUAD Discord server features a custom bot that provides users with virtual currency for completing tasks. Subsequently, this currency can be spent on acquiring a status, role, or access to closed channels.
Teams’ top streamers
The most-watched streamer among the participants of all top teams was the representative of Streamers Alliance: Oleg Stray228 Bocharov. At the beginning of his career, “Stray” dreamed of joining the ranks of the world’s best players, took part in various tournaments, and streamed his games on Twitch for friends only. Over time, Bocharov gained a permanent audience, and Dota 2 broadcasts became his main area of activity. In 2021, he managed to collect almost 19M Hours Watched, which is 21% of the team's total Hours Watched on Twitch.
Vyacheslav Buster Leontiev managed to generate 33% less – 12.7M Hours Watched – and became the best in FREAK in terms of this indicator. The streamer's top categories were CS:GO and Just Chatting. At the same time, more than 18K Average Viewers, as well as 96.5K Peak Viewers attended his broadcasts – and these are the best indicators among the participants of all top teams. Note that Buster is also a member of the Streamers Alliance. At the end of 2021, Leontiev won in the "New media" category in the "30 most promising Russians under the age of 30" ranking according to Forbes.
Holding the third spot in terms of Hours Watched is the leader of “Rabotyagi” Alexander VooDooSh Shalchinov, who is also the #1 streamer in the Heroes of Might and Magic III category. He fell behind Buster by less than 5% and generated 12.1M Hours Watched over the year, which is almost 22% of the team's total Hours Watched. Note that VooDooSh created a Twitch channel back in 2015, but tangible popularity came to him only in 2020. Since then, Alexander has become one of the most-watched Russian-speaking streamers.
Vladimir bratishkinoff Semenyuk became the best streamer of 89SQUAD. During the year, he generated more than 9M Hours Watched, which is 33.3% of the team's total indicator. At the beginning of his career, Bratishkinoff often streamed CS:GO, but he managed to win the attention of the audience not so much with his gaming skills as by relying on his charisma. Vladimir believes that the future belongs to IRL streams and live communication with the audience. That's why over half of the streamer's Hours Watched in 2021 was generated while streaming in the Just Chatting category.
Teams’ top games
Just Chatting, the most popular category on Twitch, was present within each team’s top 3 categories. It was ranked second for the Streamers Alliance (18.6% of total Hours Watched), first for FREAK (51.5%), second for Rabotyagi (9.1%), and first for 89SQUAD (64.6%).
It is worth noting that the Rabotyagi team stands out from the rest by the diversity of its game content, given that the team’s share of “other” (less popular categories) nearly reaches 49%.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive became the #2 category for FREAK and 89SQUAD, and also took the third spot in terms of Hours Watched among the members of the Streamers Alliance team (where Dota 2 became the absolute leader).
Heroes of Might and Magic III turned out to be the most popular title for Rabotyagi, generating 19.1% of the team's total Hours Watched. Note that VooDooSh almost single-handedly brought this category to the top, using it to generate 10.56M Hours Watched over the year.
Compared to other teams, Rabotyagi stood out thanks to the sheer variety of the game titles: 870 categories total. In turn, the smallest variety (350 categories) belonged to FREAK.
Gender distribution of team members
FREAK had the most girls, both in terms of numbers (twelve) and female-to-male ratio (31%). Represented by five female streamers each in 2021 were Streamers Alliance and 89SQUAD teams, while Rabotyagi featured only one female streamer: Ksenia Zanuda Sevastyanova.
The first spots in terms of the number and ratio of male streamers were taken by the Streamers Alliance (28) and Rabotyagi (95%), respectively.
Distribution of team members by country
Quite expectedly, the main share of participants in the Russian-speaking teams on Twitch was composed of Russian streamers. The FREAK team had the most Russian representatives (32 people).
89SQUAD was the most nationally diverse team on Twitch in 2021, consisting of 21 Russians, four Ukrainians, one Belarusian, one Kazakh, as well as one Russian-speaking streamer from Romania, Germany, and Italy (expats from Russia and Ukraine). The team with the least diverse roster was Streamers Alliance, represented by 29 Russians and four Ukrainians.
Team viewership dynamics
Compared to 2020, all teams have improved their Hours Watched by more than 100%. For Streamers Alliance, this figure grew by 50.59M hours (up 126.2%), for FREAK — by 39.66M hours (up 113.2%), for Rabotyagi — by 34.55M hours (up 161.7%), and for 89SQUAD — by 13.96M hours (up 106.9%).
It should be noted that it was 2020 that was a breakthrough year for streaming – but in 2021, when many coronavirus restrictions were eased, the rapid growth of the platform’s audience continued.
Team audience overlap
We analyzed the viewers of the teams and found out that the audiences of FREAK and Streamers Alliance overlap a lot. Approximately 75% of the viewers of FREAK show up on the streams of Streamers Alliance members, and 73% of Streamers Alliance viewers follow the representatives of FREAK. At the same time, 73% of the 89SQUAD audience are also the viewers of FREAK, while 71% are also visiting the broadcasts of Streamers Alliance.
The audience of other teams overlaps the least with Rabotyagi. Only 19% of FREAK viewers, 22% of Streamers Alliance viewers, and 28% of 89SQUAD viewers follow the representatives of this team. At the same time, slightly more than half of the audience of Rabotyagi attend the broadcasts of representatives of FREAK and Streamers Alliance.
It should be also noted that Rabotyagi has an older audience, while other Twitch teams from the list are mostly followed by youngsters.
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Using the Russian-speaking Twitch teams as an example, it can be seen that in 2021 the Hours Watched of many content creators have more than doubled. There was not a single mono-national or mono-gender team in the top, and the teams’ audiences tend to overlap quite often.
2022 began with a tragedy in Ukraine, but we’d like to hope that the streams will retain their friendly atmosphere, multinational teams will not fall apart, and yesterday's friends will not become enemies.
