Virtually all streaming platforms saw a decline in audience reach in Q4 2022. This concerns both large platforms like Twitch and smaller services focused on a specific country or region. Only the non-gaming section of YouTube Live slightly increased in the number of Hours Watched, largely thanks to broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup. We compiled data on all popular platforms in our new Global Livestreaming Landscape section to find out general trends and dynamics.
Twitch Viewers Statistics Q4 2022
Twitch's audience reach in Q4 2022 (October-December) was more than 5.2 billion HW, 6.3% lower from Q3. At the same time, Twitch's gaming sections saw a decline from 4.5 to 4.2 billion HW (-7.3%).
The drop in stats was caused by several reasons. First, the Just Chatting category, which has the largest audience reach on the platform, declined slightly by the end of the year. Second, the audience in the Slots category decreased by up to three times on the platform after the TOS update regarding gambling. The latter led to a decline in the broadcasting of the platform's top streamers (e.g., xQc).
Almost all of Twitch's main gaming categories — League of Legends, Valorant, Apex Legends, Dota 2 and others — had a drop in Q4. This was mainly due to a lower activity on the esports scene. For example, League of Legends regional leagues ended in the middle of the year, and the winner of VALORANT Champions 2022 was already determined in September. Q4 also saw major final tournaments like 2022 World Championship or The International 2022, but they proved to be insufficient to smooth out the overall decline in total HW on the platform.
The only exceptions to this trend were CS:GO and Call of Duty: Warzone (after the release of Warzone 2.0), which showed a slight increase in total HW by the end of the year. Overwatch 2 and FIFA 23, which were released in Q4 of the year, also ranked at the top of the popular categories.
YouTube Live & YouTube Gaming Viewership Q4 2022
Many content creators perceive Twitch as a platform for streaming games, but the situation with YouTube is different — it is the regular non-gaming broadcasts from the Live section that have the largest audience reach. If we consider gaming and non-gaming segments of YouTube separately, we get interesting statistics.
The share of gaming broadcasts on YouTube Live is just over 15% of total HW on the platform, while it reaches as much as 80% on Twitch.
YouTube Live's non-gaming segment grew from 7.8 billion to 8.15 billion HW in Q4 2022 (+3.48%).
Entertainment, the most popular section on YouTube Live, grew by as much as 10% in Q4 2022. Between October and December, Entertainment streams totaled more than 1.55 billion HW. However, the Sports section showed the biggest growth, with a 28% increase thanks to the FIFA World Cup broadcasts in Qatar. In fact, this section has become the record-breaker by Peak Viewers on the platform — 7.3 million viewers. Out of these, 6.1 million people watched the CazéTV channel of the Brazilian streamer casimito, who covered the national team's matches at the Mondial.
The YouTube Gaming segment racked up 1.22 billion HW in Q4 2022 — 3.76% short of what it had in Q3.
Other platforms viewership in Q4 2022
This trend is observed in all regions. For example, NimoTV, which focuses mainly on Southeast Asia, lost almost 30% of the number seen in Q3. We should remind you that the platform began to have problems in the spring, when due to government sanctions Tencent was forced to limit funding for NimoTV, which led to the shutdown of the service in 14 countries, including Brazil.
Trovo, which has many streamers from Eastern Europe and South America, had a similar decline of 27.8%. In the case of this platform, there is rather a decline after the dynamic growth in the first half of the year. At that time, many streamers from Russia, who faced restrictions on Twitch due to sanctions, tried to broadcast on Trovo.
AfreecaTV, which is watched in South Korea, performed slightly better, losing only 6.1%.
Q4 2022 saw a certain decline on almost all platforms, regardless of their size, geography or target audience.