Recently one of the main global football stars Neymar signed an exclusive contract with Facebook Gaming and even managed to run the first stream (more than 30K Peak Viewers!). Who will be competing with the Brazilian on the platform? And what audience is to be conquered? Streams Charts begins summing up the year, and let's start with the biggest Facebook Gaming streamers.
Disclaimer: The statistics shown below represent the period from January 1 to December 21, 2021. Overall number of Hours Watched is based on data of channels included in the sample (428.8K). The final results may change by the end of the year, as well as the positions of the channels in the top.
In 2021, viewers spent over 3.92 billion hours watching broadcasts of the streamers in the sample (428.8K channels). On average, there were about 2.1K channels on air simultaneously, and at the peak this value reached 3.2K. It is noteworthy that during the year the creators of the platform broadcast more than 11.1K different games / categories.
The graph of viewers' activity by months looks quite flat; significant drawdowns occurred only in the summer months (in July and August), when many people spend time outside computers. Viewers followed the streams on Facebook Gaming most actively in October: the total Hours Watch for this month amounted to 454.4M.
In contrast to Twitch, where the top is almost always English- and Portuguese-speaking streamers, on Facebook Gaming the audience is quite different — the top had a lot of representatives from Southeast Asia.
Facebook is one of the leading broadcasting platforms for mobile games and mobile esports tournaments. In 2021 the most popular channel of the service was MPL Philippines, which broadcasts not only the local Mobile Legends: Bang Bang league, but also major international competitions such as the recent M3 World Championship.
The MPL Philippines channel generated more than 32 million Hours Watched in a year, no other channel came close to those numbers — the closest pursuer had 33% fewer HW. with an incredible Peak Viewers number of 755K people — the number of people who watched the decisive matches of MPL PH Season 7
Tarboun from Egypt was the most popular among the creators. He broadcasts PUBG Mobile and his streams accumulated over 24.1 million Hours Watched in a year. It should be noted that Spanish variety streamer NexxuzHD had similar statistics (23.7 million Hours Watched); he plays GTA 5, Minecraft and many other titles.
The ranking also includes three streamers from Vietnam, and the top 10 was rounded out by Brazilian Gabriel Peixe Batista, one of the leading streamers of the LOUD organization, the main streaming platform of which is Twitch.
According Peak Viewers metric, four channels Mobile Legends: Bang Bang esports channels made it to the top 10, and three of them took #1-3 spots in the rankings. ML:BB channel for the audience from Myanmar topped the list with over 919K people concurrently watching the grand final of the M2 World Championship.
The top 10 also includes streamers from Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Interestingly, the seventh place is occupied by the creator Atro, a native of Iraq, whose family emigrated to the Netherlands.
We also analyzed the audience of Facebook Gaming broadcasts by languages. Facebook Gaming viewers, unlike Twitch, are much less homogeneous and represent different regions of the world: none of the languages is exceptionally dominant compared with the other ones.
In terms of total Hours Watched percentage, Spanish ranked first with 14.1% of the total HW. Indonesian, Vietnamese, Tagalog (the language of the Philippines) and Arabic also accounted for more than 10%. Interestingly, English was only in sixth place with 8.3% — it is worth noting that Hindus often broadcast in this language.
If we consider languages according to streamers, the situation is slightly different. Out of 428,9K channels, 11.7% are from the Philippines. There are also many creators from Indonesia, Bangladesh/India, Thailand and Spanish-speaking countries.
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According to general statistics, Facebook Gaming (so far) is not ready to compete with more successful streaming services — Twitch accumulates similar numbers regarding total Hours Watched in just 2-3 months, not a year. But FB has successfully occupied the niche of mobile gaming, especially in Southeast Asia: the platform is popular with fans of ML:BB, PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, and other titles.
