2023 was an eventful year for live streaming across the industry and 2024 promises to bring much more to the industry. From the growing VTubing sector to which content streamers are likely to focus on this year, we also analyse the industry from an overview to predict which platforms are growing, and which regions hold the most potential for expansion in 2024. Here at Streams Charts, we look forward to 2024, answering what trends can be seen in the live streaming industry, which streamer groups are growing, and what kind of content we can expect from this year.
VTubing continues to diversify, up-and-coming South Korean streamers face the unknown
2023 was the best year yet for the VTubing section of live streaming. Last year, Vtubers across all platforms tracked by Streams Charts generated over 1.1B Hours Watched, marking a 14.2% increase in watch time compared to the previous year. Ironmouse won Content Creator of the Year at The Game Awards 2023 and the first-ever The VTuber Awards hosted by filian celebrated the best creators of the sector. Whether looking at the most popular streamers on YouTube or the most-watched streaming debutants of the year, VTubers dominate these rankings and are ubiquitous across the live streaming industry.
As the VTubing sector of the industry continues to grow, it evolves, too. Many of the top newcomers to the VTubing genre of live streaming in 2023 were different to the YouTube Live-based Japanese creators we expect to dominate the charts. Hololive, the most-watched VTubing agency of 2023, continued to expand its English-speaking group of creators and Korean-speaking VTubers were some of the most successful streaming debutants of the year. Gawr Gura Ch. hololive-EN, one of hololive’s first English-speaking VTubers, ranked among the top 10 VTubers of the year by Average Viewers.
With the popularity of these creators undeniable, 2024 will likely bring many more English-speaking and Korean-speaking creators to the industry. 2023’s statistics prove that there is a fast-growing audience for these creators, and the VTubing industry will continue to diversify and slowly move away from its monolithic Japan-centric affiliation. However, the question on many minds is where will these Korean-speaking VTubers go? Popular Korean-speaking VTubers, such as ayatsunoyuni_stellive and airikanna_stellive, generally prefer to stream on Twitch; but Twitch announced towards the tail-end of 2023 that they would be ceasing all operations in South Korea as of February 2024.
Of the top 20 most-watched Korean-speaking VTubers of 2023, 19 of them were based on Twitch. Many of these creators are Independent and not affiliated with any agency; these independent creators are seemingly undecided on where to go, with many of them increasing their Airtime in January, despite Twitch shutting down in South Korea in only a month. At the moment, Korean live-streamers have three main options for where to move their operations: YouTube Live, AfreecaTV, and the new CHZZK.
At the start of 2024, Wookwakgood announced his VTubing group ISEGYE IDOL will begin streaming on AfreecaTV. In 2023, all six members of ISEGYE IDOL ranked within the top 10 most-watched Korean-speaking VTubers of the year, with three of them filling the top three places. The battle to fill the Korean market is on, and the top VTubers of the region have made their choice to move to AfreecaTV.
Who will fill the Korean market gap left behind by Twitch
In December of 2023, Twitch CEO DJ Clancy announced the live streaming platform would shut down its South Korean operations on February 27, 2024. The decision came as a result of the high cost of operation in South Korea, due to Korean law allowing internet service providers to charge foreign media companies high network fees. Twitch had tried to reduce the cost of operations in the region by limiting video quality, disabling certain features, and more. However, these measures were not enough for Twitch to continue its operations, and eventually, the decision was made to exit the country’s market.
With Twitch leaving the region, the timing was perfect for South Korean company and online platform Naver to present their own live streaming platform: CHZZK. CHZZK is currently operating as an open beta and is slated for a full release in mid-2024. The platform offers full HD 1080p video at 60 frames a second, a VOD service for past broadcasts, and other features with Twitch disabled in the region amidst cost-cutting measures.
CHZZK is a new and exciting platform for the Korean market, but it has to compete with AfreecaTV, which has been operating in South Korea for 18 years. When Twitch’s cease of Korean operations was announced, AfreecaTV stock soared by 54% to 99.6K Korean won. AfreecaTV announced a comprehensive platform renovation plan, with plans to change its name to SOOP in Q3 2024 and hoping to break into the global market.
AfreecaTV recently reached its highest Peak Channels, which represents the peak amount of channels broadcasting on the platform, in over two years. It also reached an Average Viewers figure higher than the platform has seen in a year. Both AfreecaTV and CHZZK are attempting to attract popular Twitch streamers to their platform, although it is too early to currently determine which of these is more likely to succeed. Nevertheless, the departure of Twitch from South Korea means both AfreecaTV and CHZZK will reach heights never before seen, and as their domestic market grows, may expand into the international market.
Special events are projected to continue to grow and draw more sponsors
Throughout 2023, special events hosted by streamers were some of the most popular content on Twitch, Kick, and YouTube Live. Ibai’s La Veleda Del Año 3, Squeezie’s GP Explorer 2, and WestCol’s Stream Fighters 2 were some of the most popular live streams ever. Ibai set a new Twitch Peak Viewers record with 3.44M concurrent viewers, and WestCol set the Kick Peak Viewers record with 806K PV.
Not only are the peak viewerships reached by these streams impressive, but their consistent year-on-year growth is particularly eye-catching. Ibai’s first-ever La Veleda Del Año reached 1.54M Peak Viewers, the second iteration reached 3.35M Peak Viewers, and the most recent 2023 event 3.44M Peak Viewers. Squeezie’s initial GP Explorer event reached 1.04M PV, and the second iteration in 2023 reached 1.34M PV. Not only do these events help content creators maximise their potential audience, but they also offer the creators an opportunity to collaborate with huge brands through sponsorships.
Ibai’s first boxing event in 2021 was sponsored by Spanish brewing company Mahou San Miguel and sports goods outlets JD Sports and Everlast. These companies had their brands exposed to over one and a half million concurrent viewers thanks to ibai’s event, and every year more and more high-value brands want to join forces with ibai. Most recently, his third boxing event in 2023 was sponsored by Samsung, Spotify, Coca-Cola, PlayStation, and more.
Squeezie’s first GP Explorer event in 2022 was sponsored by PUBG Mobile, Call of Duty, NordVPN, TikTok, and more. Although these were already some extremely high-value sponsors for his first ever, his event continued to draw more attention from fans and sponsors alike for its second iteration in 2023. GP Explorer 2 was sponsored by F1 team Alpine, Samsumg, Overwatch, Crunchyroll, World of Tanks, and many more. The GP Explorer 2 event was viewed by over 1.34M fans concurrently at peak, and sold out 60K seats for the event in mere minutes.
As more and more household name sponsors join these events, the budgets, aspirations, and ambitions of those organising the event will only continue to grow. Both ibai’s and Squeezie’s events feature content creators and internet personalities from all over the Spanish and French-speaking sectors, respectively. By combining the viewership potential of all those attending, these events continue to set viewership records for their respective markets. One particular subcategory of these special events also enjoyed a wildly successful 2023 and will likely continue to grow in 2024: awards shows.
2023 was home to a wide variety of awards shows hosted and organised by content creators and for content creators. The ESLAND Awards 2023, Premios ESLAND in Spanish, was hosted by popular creator TheGrefg and reached over 1.75M Peak Viewers. The ESLAND Awards self-reported 730M views for their 2023 awards and over €6.6M in earned media for their main sponsors, McDelivery, Universal Music Group, Twitch, and others. QTCinderella’s The Streamer Awards 2023 garnered 354K Peak Viewers for their sponsors AT&T, Spotify, Mountain Dew, KFC, Fansly, and Nitro Stream Racing.
2023 was also home to the inaugural editions of events such as The VTuber Awards and The ASMR Streamer Awards, two niche awards shows for live streaming subsections. Streamers clearly understand the power of these awards shows, as they can connect with brands and utilise the viewership potential of all nominees. Expect to see many more new awards shows in 2024, as well as established shows reaching new viewership heights and connecting with higher-value brands and sponsors.
Kick to continue progressive growth in 2024, but now must compete with X (former Twitter)
As we have covered, 2023 was a crucial year for many creators and sectors of live streaming content creators. However, the year also saw many platforms and companies branch out further into the live streaming industry, causing established platforms to reinvent themselves to compete with this new competition.
Streaming platform Kick, which was launched in late 2022, grew and garnered more attention throughout 2023. The platform has settled as the third most popular option for streamers by the end of 2023, having quickly climbed through the ranks. Kick enabled its massive growth by appealing to creators with high-value contracts for popular creators and their Creator Incentive Program which supports smaller creators.
Kick signed contracts with various famous creators throughout the live streaming industry; xQc, who has 11.97M Twitch Followers, announced a $70M nonexclusive contract with Kick in mid-2023, which also includes incentives which could boost the value to over $100M. Amouranth, who boasts 6.33M Followers on Twitch, signed a contract with Kick around the same time. Although the details of her contract are not public, Amouranth did reveal it has significantly boosted her income; a substantial claim for someone who earned $57M gross on OnlyFans between 2020 and 2024.
Welcome to the Kick family @GMHikaru ????
— Kick.com (@KickStreaming) March 29, 2023
Live Wednesday 11AM EST https://t.co/GjKXKBhVHM ???? pic.twitter.com/LWZD8lw88Y
Kick brought various live streaming personalities to their platform in 2023, including Chess Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura
Kick has not only secured some of the most famous content creators in the industry but also supported smaller creators. Kick soft-launched their Creator Incentive Program in late 2023 with a select number of creators on the platform. Not only does Kick offer an attractive 95/5 revenue split for creators, but through the Creator Incentive Program streamers can now also earn an hourly minimum wage of $16.
Another platform joined the fray in 2023 too: X, formerly Twitter. The social media platform is expanding into the live streaming industry, offering creators a place to stream, network, and advertise their content all from one social media platform. While Kick’s revenue share of 95/5 dwarfed YouTube Live’s 70/30 split and Twitch’s former 50/50 split, X offers creators a 97/3 split.
All the new competition in the industry has caused Twitch to reevaluate its revenue split and other attractions for creators. In mid-2023, Twitch announced their Partner Plus Program, which offers creators a 70/30 split for up to $100K. Only yesterday, Twitch expanded the program to more creators and eliminated the $100K cap on the 70/30 revenue split. Twitch also announced at TwitchCon that they would begin allowing creators to multistream to any platform they choose, whereas previously streamers could only multistream to mobile-based live streaming platforms. This means Twitch creators can enjoy the benefits of other live streaming platforms, without being forced to abandon Twitch.
The live streaming industry became considerably more competitive throughout 2023. As other companies and platforms establish themselves and offer alluring features to bring creators to the platform, the industry leaders must evolve and compete with these new platforms. X and CHZZK are both promising emerging platforms for 2024 and as these platforms and others continue to attempt to draw creators to their platforms, live streaming can only become more beneficial for streamers in 2024.
Expansion of Chinese platforms into the global market
The growth of Chinese live streaming platforms is tough to parse. DouYu, Huya, BiliBili and other Chinese platforms do not have reliable publicly accessible data for their viewership. These platforms utilise metrics such as a “Heat Index”, which can be used to find the most popular stream or content on the site, but how this metric is generated is not public information: meaning it is unfit for comparison with other live-streaming data.
Despite this, live streaming in China is growing yearly and expanding into new areas. Live streaming e-commerce is one of China's biggest emerging sectors, where streamers, or “anchors” as they are known in China, advertise products to their user base. Many platforms have shopping capabilities built directly into the app, so users can immediately buy whatever they see on screen.
Shein, a Chinese fast fashion retailer, set a revenue target of $58.5 billion by 2025. The company has heavily invested in advertising its products to Gen Z through live streaming e-commerce. In 2022, the retailer made up nearly 20% of the global fast-fashion industry. According to Insider Intelligence, a market research company, live streaming e-commerce accounted for 19.2% of all Chinese e-commerce sales in 2023, and featured over 370M individual digital customers.
Huya Live is one of the largest Chinese live streaming services, and it operates globally as Nimo TV. At the Nimo TV Global Gala 2023, which became the platform's most popular broadcast with over 3M Peak Viewers, Huya CEO Dong Rongjie announced that Huya is working on its global expansion. The live streaming platform will focus on the MENA and Southeast Asian markets initially, before attempting to break into the Western market. Nimo TV is already hugely popular in Vietnam, and the company wants to expand their operations in Thailand and Indonesia.
BiliBili, a Chinese video-sharing platform, creates its own exclusive animations and TV series. At the Asia TV Forum & Market in late 2023, the CEO of BiliBili Carly Lee emphasised the company’s wish to bring their Chinese content to global audiences around the work. The company has already partnered with Netflix, Crunchyroll, and other platforms to release their content worldwide and they also signed a partnership with Fuji Television of Japan to launch their own exclusive channel B8station, which will broadcast BiliBili animations.
Chinese media and live streaming companies already have plans in motion to expand into the global market in the upcoming years. The e-commerce sector of the industry is so wildly profitable that this is something we may see break into the Western market more in 2024, especially on malleable new platforms such as X’s live streaming option.
Regional growth trends for 2024
According to available information and movements of the companies within the industry, China’s live streaming sector appears to be growing and making big moves in 2024. For this section of the article, we wanted to highlight other growing regions within the live streaming sector.
The Southern Asia live-streaming sector grew its watch time on Twitch and YouTube Gaming by over 11% in 2023, reaching 297.3M Hours Watched. The most watched streams for this period are largely represented by the mobile gaming industry, especially in India. In 2020, India banned a long list of Chinese apps based on security concerns, which included mobile games such as Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, PUBG Mobile, and Arena of Valor. Since the ban, many companies have developed India-specific versions of these games. The most popular of these India-specific versions is Battlegrounds Mobile India, which was released in mid-2021.
In 2023, Battlegrounds Mobile India generated 117M+ Hours Watched on YouTube Gaming, marking a 34% increase compared to the previous year. The Southeast Asian sector of live streaming is growing, and this is largely thanks to the ever-growing popularity of mobile gaming. The Indian mobile gaming sector suffered a setback in 2020 when many apps were banned, but the industry is back on track in the region and growing significantly.
In 2023, the Latin American sector of live streaming garnered over 1.91B Hours Watched on Twitch and YouTube Gaming. If the current rate of growth continues throughout 2024, we can expect the region to generate 2B Hours Watched this year. Latin America continues to impress with its sizable Spanish-speaking audience, who generate high viewership for games such as Counter-Strike 2, Grand Theft Auto V, and Minecraft.
Evolving AI offers functionality for both established and newcomer live streamers
AI quickly took hold in the live streaming industry in 2023, not only as an assistant bot or media creator but even as a streamer. Vedal987, also known as Neuro-sama, generated 5.38M Hours Watched in 2023 as an AI streamer. The bot was originally created to play osu!, but has since been repurposed as a live streamer who can interact with chat, react to viewer-submitted photos, and more.
AI is also currently being used to help streamers out with certain tasks. Twitch viewers know Nightbot well, a chatbot that can be used to execute commands and manage your stream. However, now AI chatbots are taking foot in the industry, with many popping up and quickly gaining a user base. These bots have adjustable personalities and are extremely customisable, meaning streamers can integrate them into their content without altering their brand. These bots are also being utilised for automatic chat moderation. As these bots perfect themselves over time, larger streamers will likely integrate these bots into their chat in 2024 and beyond. Many streamers with thousands of concurrent viewers complain about the monumental task of moderating their chat, and AI presents a possible solution for these creators.
AI is also useful for creating automatic highlight reels of your streams, for use either on VOD services or in more short-form content. Advertising your stream and brand on social media is a key strategy content creators employ to reach a wider audience, and AI is helping smaller streamers with little media experience to create content for themselves.
One large appeal of the VTubing industry is the anonymity and preservation of the streamer’s privacy, however, expensive 3D models and rigging setups are one of the biggest barriers to entry for this subgenre. In 2024, AI will likely be used by up and coming streamers to create VTubing avatars for themselves, before they can afford to commission a higher-quality model from an experienced rigger.
Real-time AI software for masking voices may also be another tool for streamers wishing to hide their identity. AI audio software is constantly evolving, and eventually it may become seamless enough that a live streamer can completely change their voice to maximise the protection of their privacy. In whatever form it will take, AI will definitively cement itself within the live streaming industry in 2024.
Brands reaching out to content creators for support and promotion
As we looked at in the above streaming events section, brands such as Samsung, Coca-Cola, Spotify, and many more are working with streamers and creators for events, operating as sponsors and enjoying the massive brand exposure these special events allow. Brands and companies understand this isn’t just a one-way street and are reaching out to streamers and influencers for the brand’s own events.
Many game companies have already begun to reach out to celebrities to expose their brand to a new audience and connect with certain demographics. In late 2023, Apex Legends hosted a themed event with Post Malone which ran throughout November, and Fortnite hosted a more extensive collaboration with Eminem. At Fortnite’s “The Big Bang Event”, Eminem held a live concert where he performed his classic “Lose Yourself”, as well as his newer “Godzilla” song. Eminem even made official Eminem x Fortnite merchandise such as hoodies, t-shirts, and vinyl available on his Eminem Store. Fortnite has a long history of collaborating with musical artists, having previously worked with Marshmello, Travis Scott, Ariana Grande, and more.
Most recently, Samsung led the way for the industry at their Galaxy Unpacked 2024 event. The event is a biannual show where Samsung showcases its new devices to the world, and at the 2024 iteration, two of the world’s most prominent creators were invited to speak at the event. Pokimane, Twitch’s most followed female creator with 9.3M Followers, spoke live at the event and discussed the gaming applications of the upcoming Samsung smartphone. MrBeast, who has more than 235M Subscribers on YouTube, created a video for the Samsung event and spoke very warmly about the new features of the phone.
Samsung has already taken the first leap for 2024, and many other brands are likely to follow suit. Samsung knows well the advantages collaborating with content creators can bring from their previous work with ibai and Squeezie for their special event streams, and they have begun utilising the followings of these creators to generate brand exposure at their own events.
For 2024, expect to see many more collaborations between brands and celebrities, and many more of these celebrities will likely include live streamers and content creators. As the industry continues to grow, so does the popularity of these creators, which only makes them more attractive for brands and companies who are always looking to connect with the younger generation.
