The streaming community has recently seen a huge platform transfer, as Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo signed an exclusive contract with Youtube Gaming, leaving eight years of Twitch streaming career and 4.4M followers behind.
Why DrLupo goes to YouTube?
Following the footsteps of other well-known streamers, such as CouRage and Valkyrae, DrLupo’s first official YouTube stream took place on August 31st, 2021. Despite not disclosing the terms of the deal, DrLupo explained his decision in an interview for The Washington Post.
“Family time is crazy important, [as is] reducing the amount of pressure, because mental health is crazy important,” he said, adding that he spent years streaming for 60-70 hours per week. “Everybody’s just trying to secure the bag, right? There’s no shame in that. That’s literally why everybody gets up and goes to work, right? So of course, the financial situation that YouTube presented me without a doubt is like, you know, I’m secure for life. Everybody’s trying to get to that point. Why would I say no to that?”
Although DrLupo plans to continue streaming on YouTube, he’s hoping to be able to focus more on producing pre-recorded content, which should allow him to devote more energy to his family.
Early career
Previously a systems engineer for a local insurance firm in Omaha, DrLupo began his streaming career by streaming Destiny and Diablo 3, before transitioning to a variety of other games like H1Z1, Fortnite, Overwatch or PUBG. He often streamed in a group with the likes of Ninja, Myth and TimTheTatman, which played a significant role in his growing popularity.
Thanks to his 24-hour fundraising streaming event called Build Against Cancer, DrLupo is widely considered one of the most charitable streamers on Twitch. The event launched in 2018, when he raised $600,000 for St. Jude's Children Research Hospital to benefit children diagnosed with cancer. One year later, he set a goal to raise $1 million, beating his own objective by raising $2.3 million.
The 2020’s edition of the event saw him raise $2 million once again. During this event, DrLupo streamed a variety of games such as The Sims 4, Among Us, Minecraft and Fortnite, among others. The stream peaked at 84K concurrent viewers and gathered a total of 815.7K Hours Watched. On average, 32.3K viewers tuned in.
DrLupo’s Twitch viewership statistics
With 4.4M million followers, DrLupo is currently the 27th most-followed channel on Twitch. The highest peak he achieved occurred during his stream on October 20th, 2020, while talking with Borat Sagdiyev, a character created by the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. The stream attracted 167.5K Peak Viewers and 86.3K Average Viewers, gathering a total of 100K Hours Watched.
Yesterday @DrLupo had a stream with the one and only @BoratSagdiyev before his next movie release on @PrimeVideo #Borat2
— Streams Charts (@StreamsCharts) October 21, 2020
Air time: 1,2
Hours Watched: 108K
Peak Viewers: 167.5K ????
Average concurrent viewers: 86.4K
More stats from DrLupo #Twitch streams: https://t.co/5roFVr1Xqa pic.twitter.com/vtImhy6FBm
As for DrLupo’s longest streams, the Build Against Cancer events were his only streams that surpassed 25 hours of Airtime. DrLupo wasn’t banned on Twitch. His channel accumulated 170.9M Total Views.
The Top 5 most watched DrLupo's games in 2020 and 2021 were Escape From Tarkov, Among Us, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout and Apex Legends, with Tarkov leading unequivocally.
DrLupo admitted that the platform switch made him go from a “pretty big fish in a lake” to a “little fish in the ocean” and that YouTube offers him a lot of room to grow. That said, at the time of writing this article, he has already built up a following of 1.8 million YouTube subscribers. Although he’s likely to see slightly lower viewership than on Twitch, at least for a while, DrLupo relies on the loyalty of his community.
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Header image: The Washington Post
