The year gone by was filled with events, both esports and influencer-led endeavors, that recorded milestone viewership numbers. On December 12, one more show joined this list, with The Game Awards 2025 — one of the industry's most coveted ceremonies — emerging as the series' most successful ones yet.
The 2025 edition of this global celebration of video games was held at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, handing out awards in over 30 categories. It also previewed some of the biggest upcoming titles that fans have been looking forward to, adding to the event's appeal on live broadcasting.
Moreover, some of the most talked-about games from 2025 that were touted for success and awards met those expectations. The star of the show was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which won a mind-boggling nine awards from 13 nominations. The turn-based role-playing title also created history as the first debut game to win the Game of the Year trophy.
With so much happening, viewers were glued to the livestreams from start to finish, ensuring that The Game Awards 2025 finished as the series' most popular iteration. As per the Streams Charts database, it peaked at around 4.4 million viewers, bettering the mark set at last year's show by around 8.58%, while the 18.8 million Hours Watched (HW) it accrued was also a new record.
Western livestreaming platforms were where the event got the most traction, including reaching almost 4.3 million Peak Viewers (PV). This number came from around 26,000 channels that broadcast it at some point during its nearly seven-hour airtime.
The 2025 ceremony also averaged over 2.75 million viewers, among the five highest in any edition in the series. These numbers also put it among the most successful livestreaming exercises of the year, sitting alongside industry giants like La Velada del Año, LoL Worlds and Nintendo Direct when it comes to peak and average concurrent viewership.
Most popular livestreaming events in 2025
| Rank | Event name | Peak Viewers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2024 ASEAN Championship
|
10 743 416 PV
|
| 2 | La Velada Del Año V
|
9 253 386 PV
|
| 3 | Ballon d’Or 2025
|
7 158 286 PV
|
| 4 | 2025 World Championship [Worlds 2025]
|
6 752 585 PV
|
| 5 | Nintendo Direct: Nintendo Switch 2 Showcase 02.04.2025
|
6 308 393 PV
|
| 6 | The Game Awards 2025
|
4 348 016 PV
|
Like The Game Awards 2024, this year's edition was also helped by its sheer scale in terms of livestreaming reach. Very few events get even 500 community streamers, but the 2025 edition of The Game Awards received attention from over 26,000 channels. The two official broadcasts on YouTube and Twitch were the most successful, with the former hitting a channel peak record of 1.31 million viewers.
Crucially, there was high diversity in the co-casting list, with the likes of Zack "zackrawrr" Hoyt, Alan "alanzoka" Ferreira and Rubén "rubius" Doblas all tuning in. Three of the biggest content creators from the communities that speak English, Spanish and Portuguese, respectively, covering The Game Awards 2025 show just how influential the ceremony has become over the last few years.
As livestreaming continues to grow and become a more influential aspect of the overall entertainment medium, certain endeavours have caught the attention of the mainstream media. With its recent viewership burst, The Game Awards has become one of these entities.
As long as video games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 make waves, the series is only set to grow in scale and reach.
