It's no secret that FIFA series has always been a hit on Twitch among sports games. 2020 was no exception, but this time two versions of the football simulator were among the leaders at once. And who tried to impose competition on them? Streams Charts tells about the popularity of Rocket League, the unexpected rise of chess and how the British Formula 1 driver helped iRacing to reach the top. 
For a long time, no one has any doubt that FIFA is the main sports game in the world. FIFA Ultimate Team brings EA millions of dollars, major tournaments are regularly held (including those licensed by FIFA itself), and on Twitch, viewers watch both the matches and the opening of packs.
In 2020, FIFA 20 and FIFA 21 entered the top 20 most popular Twitch categories — the only ones among sports games. FIFA 20 has become the leader in the ranking of sports games with 177.8M hours watched, but FIFA 21 deserves much more attention.
The latest version of the football simulator was released in October, but three months was more than enough for it to gain 156.2M hours watched on Twitch, as well as to become the leader in peak viewers: FIFA 21 broadcasts at their peak were watched by up to 473K people (FIFA 20, which became the second in PV, had only 366K concurrent viewers).
The only FIFA superstar on Twitch is Castro1021. In terms of HW, he outperformed his closest competitor by three times more HW in FIFA 21, and almost four times more in FIFA 20. During the year, his football simulator broadcasts scored 32.7M hours watched!
The third place in the ranking of sports games was taken by Rocket League. Last year its broadcasts collected 139M hours watched — Rocket League took 22nd place among all categories in 2020. The official Twitch channel of the game, where matches of Rocket League Championship Series are streamed, still brings the most hours watched to the game.
It is worth noting that in 2020 Rocket League switched to a new distribution model, since September, the game can be obtained for free in the Epic Games Store on PC and in consoles' stores. Thanks to that, the game reached 1M concurrent players for the first time in history.
Who would have thought that 2020 would be so successful... for Chess? The audience was so interested in the so-called “fast chess” that many esports organizations began to sign real grandmasters as content makers. The trend was set by Team SoloMid, which signed a contract with Hikaru Nakamura at the end of August. TSM's example was followed by Cloud9, Team Envy and FURIA.
The world's most popular TV series “The Queen's Gambit” also contributed to the popularization of chess on Twitch. After its release, HW and PV of the section began to grow rapidly.
Also Read: The impact of “The Queen's Gambit” on watching chess on Twitch
During the year, chess gained 72.8M hours watched with 155K peak viewers and outran poker. In addition, the most popular Twitch video in 2020 was recorded on a chess broadcast when a scholar's mate that xQc missed made Hikaru Nakamura speechless.
FIFA wasn't the only series to have two games in Twitch's top 10 sports games in the year. A similar result was achieved by two more titles — NBA2K and Madden NFL.
Users of the streaming service like basketball more. The two latest versions of NBA 2K scored 92.1M hours watched in total over the year, while American football simulators have three times less — 30.9M hours watched. It should be noted that at the end of 2020, NBA 2K21 also hit the top 10 new products of the year.
Closing the top 10 is the only racing simulator that got into the ranking. It is iRacing, which gained 12.7M hours watched in a year. The game is considered one of the most “accurate” autosims on the market and is preferred by pilots who trained in iRacing during quarantine. By the end of the year, iRacing overtook all competitors among racing simulators — even F1, which was especially popular in spring and early summer.
There are often iRacing tournaments sponsored by car manufacturers (for example, Subaru entered into a partnership with the game in April). One of the biggest events took place in the spring: NASCAR moved the race to iRacing, where all the top drivers of the association played.
The main streamer of iRacing was the British driver and member of the McLaren Formula 1 team Lando Norris. During the year, his game streams scored 908.3K hours watched.
Earlier, Streams Charts named the most popular game genres of 2020 on Twitch and analyzed the phenomenon of Just Chatting — the main category of the streaming platform. Subscribe to our social networks: more cool stuff coming soon!
