2020 has been a special year for streaming and the gaming industry in general. The pandemic forced tournaments to go online, while the Twitch platform experienced an influx of viewers during the lockdown. We will take a look at which streamers were the most liked by the viewers and which studio gathered the most esports fans. We will also find those who failed to take advantage of the situation at hand and worsened their results compared to 2019.
Additionally, the streamer has shown the largest subscriber growth this year: 5,3 million. Compared to 2019, Felix is up four spots. His result could have been even better if not for suffering a total of three bans this year, one of which lasted a whole week.
The second spot went to the Brazilian streamer Alexandre “Gaules” Borba with 133 million hours watched. Alexandre could well be called a phenomenon of 2020, because it was he who attracted many Portuguese-speaking viewers to CS:GO tournaments and contributed to the new audience records of tournaments (for example, ESL Pro League and BLAST Premier).
It got to the point that Alexandre acted as the official Portuguese-speaking broadcaster of CS:GO tournaments. This allowed him to stay on the air longer than all the other streamers – for 8,7 thousand hours (which includes replays of tournament broadcasts).
Summit1g became the most popular streamer of the first half of 2020. He lost one spot in the overall top, but still increased his hours watched indicator by 145%. Most of his time was devoted to the new game from Riot Games – VALORANT (35 million hours watched). Following it was Escape from Tarkov with 26 million hours watched. By the way, this game was quite popular among the streamers for the second year in a row, thanks to its updates and in-game events.
Nick “NICKMERCS” Kolcheff has climbed five spots up the ranking. This was made possible by the release of a new battle royale – Call of Duty: Warzone. The streamer is ranked #1 in this particular Twitch category. Nick's results this year were influenced not only by the streams, but also by the tournaments he organized: in 2020 Nickmercs held a series of MFam Gauntlet Warzone championships.
The discipline itself appealed to the English-speaking viewers, although there were some doubts regarding the game title’s ability to gain a foothold in the gaming market. After all, the new projects tend to attract attention only during the release, only to fade into obscurity later on.
Spanish showcaster Ibai became the fifth most popular streamer of the year. Most of his time was dedicated to communicating with the fans – with the corresponding category amassing 24 million hours watched. When it comes to the games, Ibai has given his utmost attention to finding impostors in Among Us, with the corresponding broadcasts producing the highest average number of subscriptions received.
The end of 2020 was indeed a special time for the streamer: during the New Year celebrations, he set a personal peak viewers record (552 thousand) and entered the top three Twitch streamers of all time based on this indicator.
Rubius and Auronplay are two more Spanish-language content creators, as well as newcomers to this year’s top. El Rubius amassed 15 million hours watched on Minecraft, while Raul “Auronplay” preferred GTA V and ended up with 28 million hours watched.
TimTheTatman is another representative of Call of Duty and newcomer to the ranking. He holds the second spot in this discipline on Twitch. Aside of Call of Duty and VALORANT, Timothy attracted a lot of attention playing Fall Guys: for a very long time, the streamer could not “claim the crown” in his matches, which ended up becoming a meme.
On August 19th, his attempts to “get crowned” gathered 347 thousand peak viewers, which was the channel’s best result of the year. At the very end of the stream, Tim finally managed to get the coveted gaming crown, which is what caused such an influx of viewers.
Closing the list of the most popular Twitch streamers in 2020 was Asmongold. While being the most successful WoW streamer, Zach lost as many as five spots due to his statistics – which wasn’t improved compared to 2019 and amounts to 57 million hours watched. The new World of Warcraft expansions naturally fueled the viewers’ interest in his content, allowing Asmongold to stay in the top.
The most popular studios in 2020
In 2020, the esports fans were glued to the ESL CS:GO channel. The organizers had to compensate for the lack of LAN-tournaments with a large number of online events. As a result, ESL is in the lead in terms of airtime (8,7 thousand hours, that’s including the replays). The growth of hours watched was 29% as compared to 2019, with the channel itself climbing two spots up the ranking.
The second spot went to the gaming portal Fextralife. Its Twitch content is quite diverse, as the streamers are going through constant changes while trying out a variety of games. VALORANT became the leading category there with 23.5 million hours watched.
Riot Games became the third most popular studio of 2020. It features no audience growth: while in 2019 the channel was at the very top of the ranking, in 2020 the hours watched decreased by half, and even Worlds 2020 did not help the situation.
Regarding League of Legends, many regional leagues appeared on our list. The best results among them were shown by the Korean region. LCK this year got 39M Hours Watched. At the same time, LEC and LCS are almost on the same level.
Dota2RuHub dropped by one spot in 2020 but amassed 1 million hours watched more as compared to 2019.
The impact of the pandemic on the GamesDoneQuick gaming marathon was negative as well. The marathon amassed 4 million hours watched less than in 2019, which caused it to drop from fifth to the seventh spot.
Read: Summer Games Done Quick 2020: The worst score of the series?
Rocket League also got into the top. This year it showed good statistical results and almost broke the RLCS Season 4 record in terms of Hours Watched.
We've also published an article about the changes to the most popular categories of 2020 throughout the year. Subscribe to our social networks in order to avoid missing the final reports about the past year.
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