The mobile gaming industry continues to thrive. The games grew incredibly on Twitch both by hours watched and peak viewers in 2020. Read about the incredible growth of Garena Free Fire and the success of other mobile games in the new Streams Charts article.
Garena Free Fire is Unbeatable among Mobile Games on Twitch
Three and a half years have passed since the release of Garena Free Fire, but until 2020 it had never had such an overwhelmingly large success on Twitch. At the end of last year, the game was able to break into the top 5 of battle royales of the platform (including desktop titles) by hours watched.
Free Fire gained 73 million hours watched in a year, and its peak audience was more than 301 thousand people — more than Apex Legends and PUBG had. No other mobile game could show the same performance on Twitch, as its closest pursuer (Clash Royale) had five times less hours watched. It’s worth noting that in 2019 Free Fire was also included in the top mobile games on Twitch, but it didn’t show such impressive results.
Garena Free Fire’s hours watched on Twitch increased 25.3 times (!) in 2020. A year before battle royale was only sixth in the ranking of the platform's mobile titles with 2.9 million hours watched.
What caused such Free Fire growth? In 2020, the Brazilian Twitch office took a course on developing mobile streaming. As a result, local content maker Bruno “Nobru” Gus and LOUD organization began streaming on Twitch. It immediately gave the game a significant boost, because they brought their audience to Twitch from YouTube and other platforms.
Also Read: How LOUD has affected Twitch?
Mobile gaming on Twitch has grown not only thanks to Free Fire. All other popular titles have also improved their performance. Three more games surpassed the 10 million-hours-watched mark — Clash Royale (14.8 million), Summoners War: Sky Arena (13.6 million), and PUBG Mobile (11.9 million).
The popularity of titles has grown in the past year. Their results are not as impressive as Garena Free Fire, but also very significant. The greatest progress was shown by Clash Royale, which had only 4.2 million hours watched in 2019. The game continues to be very popular in some European countries: for example, Spain has its own LVP league — it was watched by 33.2 thousand people at peak in summer.
PUBG Mobile has shown the smallest rise in popularity on Twitch among the top mobile games of 2020. The game increased its hours watched (from 8.1 million to 11.9 million), but its attempts to strengthen its position on the platform were unsuccessful: only Twitch Rivals PUBG Mobile events were rather popular. The core audience of the game continues to follow the title on YouTube.
Worth noting that the extremely popular MOBA Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Arena of Valor didn’t make it in the top 10 mobile games on Twitch. They scored 3.3 and 3 million hours watched respectively. The reason is the same for both titles — they are significantly more popular on other streaming platforms like Facebook and YouTube.
Nobru: the Biggest Star of Mobile Gaming on Twitch
Garena Free Fire has its own Twitch hero — Brazilian content creator Bruno “Nobru” Gus. His channel gained 24.5 million hours watched in 2020. Nobru's own Free Fire tournaments made a significant contribution to this number, his championships entered the top 10 most popular esports events on Twitch in July and December with hundreds of thousands of viewers at peak.
It’s worth mentioning that YouTube is still Nobru’s main platform, where he has 4.5 times more subscribers than on Twitch (11.8 vs. 2.6 million). The streamer continues to broadcast his own championships on YouTube as well.
No other Twitch mobile streamer can compete with Nobru. The Brazilian is ahead of the closest pursuer (and his compatriot) Gabriel “loud_bak” Less by 8 times in hours watched: the representative of LOUD scored only 3 million hours watched in 2020. Note that the LOUD team has been streaming on Twitch for only three months, which means that the statistics are likely to improve in 2021.
Almost all the top mobile game streamers on Twitch were mainly playing and broadcasting Garena Free Fire: there eight out of ten people on the list. Two more, BigSpinCR and Trymacs, mainly streamed Clash Royale and Clash of Clans respectively.
Note that mobile games streaming popularity has grown significantly in comparison with 2019. If two years ago only two content creators crossed the mark of one million hours watched, in 2020 all the people in the top 10 have 1.4 million hours watched or more.
Esports Charts also named the most popular esports tournaments of December 2020, where almost the entire top is held by mobile esports. Which disciplines enjoyed the greatest success and how many peak viewers watched Nobru’s tournament? The answer is in our article.
