English is the most popular language on Twitch, and streamers are the main trendsetters of the platform. But who among them attracts most viewers? Streams Charts has ranked the ten most watched English-language creators on the platform by the end of 2021.
Felix ‘xQcOW’ Lengyel, a former professional Overwatch player and a current Luminosity Gaming streamer, took first place by a significant margin. By the end of 2021, he accumulated more than 273 million Hours Watched, which is 80% more than the year before. It should be noted that no other English-language streamer has accumulated more than 100 million HW.
XQc increased the gap from the closest pursuers: while in 2020 the Canadian had 38% HW more than summit1g (second place by language in 2020-2021), in 2021, the difference has grown to almost 300%. It is worth noting that xQc's RP content where the streamer plays on various games’ RP servers had the greatest success with viewers. Especially popular was GTA V content, which accounted for almost half of the streamer's HW total.
Streams Charts has published detailed reports on Twitch's major languages over 2021, including English. You can read the demo-version and purchase full access here.
Second place by language for the second time in a row went to Jaryd ‘summit1g’ Lazar, one of the streaming veterans. His viewership statistics decreased slightly in 2021 (the Average Viewers number decreased by 4K people), due to which he accumulated fewer Hours Watched than the year before: his result was 91.7 million HW. Just like most other popular streamers, summit1g mainly streamed GTA V RP content, which accounted for over half of the Hours Watched number in the year.
Top 3 streamers by Hours Watched among English-speaking content creators is closed by Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek, who will finally reach 10 million followers on Twitch in the near future. The Canadian did not make it to the language ranking in 2020 because he streamed on Mixer until August, but in 2021 he returned to the top: the streamer accumulated 85.3 million Hours Watched. Compared to most of his colleagues, shroud is not into GTA and does not communicate with the audience in Just Chatting. His content is based on playing different games. For example, in 2021 he streamed Valorant, New World, Rust, World of Warcraft and even DayZ a lot.
In fourth place is streamer Hasan ‘HasanAbi’ Piker, Twitch's main political observer. The basis of his content consists of social and political news from the U.S. and other countries, which he discusses with viewers in Just Chatting: this category accounted for more than 80% of the total Hours Watched number of 82.5 million.
Nicholas ‘NICKMERCS’ Kolcheff, the FaZe Clan co-owner, rounds out the top five with 80.7 million Hours Watched. Kolcheff is the most popular Call of Duty: Warzone streamer, and during the Verdansk Blast in-game event in April, he drew more than 371K Peak Viewers, the highest number among the top 10 streamers. At the same time, NICKMERCS began devoting almost all of his time to Apex Legends in the second half of the year. These two "battle royals" accounted for over 82% of the streamer's total Hours Watched in 2021.
In sixth place is the most popular English-speaking League of Legends streamer — Tyler ‘tyler1’ Steinkamp. He accumulated more than 76.9 million Hours Watched in a year, of which LoL accounted for more than 97%. It is interesting that the second most popular category of the American is Fitness & Health as Tyler keeps himself in shape and regularly works out.
The most watched Minecraft streamer on Twitch in the previous year is RanbooLive, an American who remains anonymous: more than 64% of 70.1 million Hours Watched were accumulated thanks to Minecraft. At the same time, Ranbo regularly streams other games — and rarely spends more than 10 hours playing them: in 2021 his broadcasts in Just Chatting, Life is Strange, Night in the Woods and Undertale were quite popular.
One of the newcomers of the top English-speaking streamers is Sykkuno, who is close to the OfflineTV association. The previous year was a real breakthrough for the American: he even participated in a charity stream on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and other American celebrities. Sykkuno accumulated 60.7 million Hours Watched in a year, and GTA 5, Valorant, Among Us, Rust, and Just Chatting accounted for the most of this number.
The most watched gambling streamer on Twitch in 2021 is ROSHTEIN, who amassed 60.5 million Hours Watched. He spent almost all of his time streaming in the Slots category, and totaled only a few hours streaming Just Chatting, FIFA 22 and Apex Legends.
Ludwig ‘ludwig’ Ahgren rounds out Twitch's ranking of the top English-speaking streamers in 2021 accumulating 56.9 million Hours Watched. More than half of his streaming time he spent in the category Just Chatting, but also played a variety of titles — from Valorant to Super Mario 64. It should be noted that Ludwig could have been higher in the ranking, but since December he started streaming only on YouTube.
