Esports has long been a part of the live-streaming sphere. Video games are an integral part of live-streaming and fans generally want to watch the best of the best, not only in their typical esports event environment. Many esports professionals have live-streaming channels where they broadcast themselves enjoying their favourite games in their free time, and fans can’t get enough.
In this ranking, we want to look at some of the most popular and most successful esports professionals right now in terms of live-streaming viewership. We searched the top-performing channels on all platforms like Twitch, YouTube Live, and more, to figure out the most-watched esports professionals over last three months. The most-watched esports players present an eclectic list representing many disciplines; who do you think makes the cut?
Teamfight Tactics
k3soju
At the top of our ranking is Michael “k3soju” Zhang, a former League of Legends pro and current Teamfight Tactics player. His League of Legends career was cut short when he received a 3-month suspension from play due to account sharing and ELO boosting, but three years later he made his debut in Teamfight Tactics competitions.
K3soju made his TFT debut with Cloud9 in 2019 and has stuck with the organisation ever since. K3soju began streaming regularly around the time of TFT’s release, and he began to build up an audience as a dedicated and skilled TFT creator. K3soju nearly exclusively streams TFT, and throughout the three-month period we analysed for this ranking, k3soju was live for less than 2 hours playing any game excluding TFT.
His huge popularity on the platform is two-fold, one part being his Ranked streams where he races to the number one spot on the leaderboard and the other being his coverage of TFT esports events. Unlike a typical community caster, k3soju broadcasts events in which he himself is playing, giving fans an opportunity to peak behind the curtain at what goes on in the mind of a professional TFT esports player.
League of Legends
NoWay
Frederik “NoWay” Hinteregger is a German League of Legends player who has been competing in the discipline for over a decade. He started off playing in minor regional German leagues and has slowly worked his way up to higher-tier events and developed his ability. During this time, NoWay also began streaming on Twitch under the name NoWay4u_Sir, a reference to his previous gamer tag, noway4u.
NoWay is one of the most dedicated streamers on this list, regularly going live for over 200 hours in a single month. He has hardly taken a break from Twitch during the past four years, and this manifests itself in how loyal and stable his audience is. Compared to a streamer like s0m, who appeals to the entire English-speaking Valorant audience, NoWay is able to compete with these creators whilst remaining a German-speaking content creator. With only 631K Followers to his name on Twitch, NoWay is able to compete with much larger creators and draw in millions of hours of watch time.
NoWay’s most popular content remains his community cast broadcasts of League of Legends events, which also present an opportunity for him to collaborate with other well-known German members of the League of Legends community.
Fortnite
Clix
Cody “Clix” Conrod is not only the third-most-watched esports professional in live-streaming but the most-watched Fortnite streamer in our database of over 21M+ channels for 2023. Clix began competing in Fortnite esports events in mid-2019, at which time he had roughly 40K Followers on Twitch.
As Clix began to compete in and win Fortnite esports events, he was also showing off his content on Twitch as he streamed himself competing in various events for cash. At the beginning of the year, he represented the organisation NRG in Fortnite, but has since left the team and continued competing in events as an independent player.
Clix’s popularity on Twitch has arguably eclipsed his reputation as an esports professional, and he now boasts over 6M Followers on Twitch, a milestone he reached in June of this year. Although some creators would diversify their content and change careers to focus on full-time content creation, Clix is still dedicated to Fortnite and an overwhelming majority of his watch time comes from Fortnite gameplay, especially tournaments and events.
Apex Legends
ImperialHal
Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen. is a well-known Apex Legends professional and recently won his first-ever ALGS Championship, the most prestigious event in Apex Legends esports. As you might imagine from his name, he is a member of the TSM roster for Apex Legends.
ImperialHal is a veteran of both Apex Legends and TSM, having joined TSM in 2019 when they entered the discipline. ImperialHal has been with the team ever since, and he quickly became a household name among Apex Legends fans. In 2021, he was crowned the “Best IGL” in North American Apex Legends and he hasn’t looked back since.
ImperialHal is a regular Twitch streamer, often being live for over 100 hours in a single month, and he is so popular because he appeals to both casual and competitive fans of the discipline. He often streams the in-game Ranked mode of Apex Legends, showing off his skills in a lower-stakes environment, but he also streams scrims (an esports term for a practice match held between teams, which are aimed to emulate the environment of an official tournament). This kind of content is hugely popular with fans of the competitive esports side of any game, and this is what helped him to become the most-watched esports professional on Twitch in the last 3 months.
Valorant
s0m
Finishing up the podium places of our rankings are s0m and mixwell, two ex-professional CS:GO players turned Valorant competitors. Sam “s0m” Oh began his professional Counter-Strike journey in 2017 on the team Naventic. Although the name might not be familiar to many, you likely know the name of one of s0m’s teammates on Naventic: TenZ, who we’ll look at in more detail later.
S0m climbed up the professional NA Counter-Strike scene, but in 2020 he received an offer to play for NRG’s Valorant division. After jumping to Valorant, s0m again began building up a name for himself in a new esports discipline, both as a player and streamer. He regularly streams himself playing Valorant Ranked with other well-known professionals and streamers, and the content was engaging enough to rank him as the most-watched Valorant professional of the last 3 months.
S0m is currently not rostered on any Valorant team, having left NRG at the end of the 2023 Valorant season following a disappointing 9th-12th finish at Champions 2023. However, as such a hot name in both esports competition and live-streaming, it’s likely that he will compete again and continue to boast his watch-time dominance.
mixwell
Óscar “mixwell” Cañellas Colocho’s story is similar to s0m’s, but not exactly the same. Mixwell began his professional career as a Counter-Strike Source player, and enjoyed a long career in CS:GO that lasted almost a decade. He achieved his biggest successes with the OpTic Gaming roster between 2016 and 2018, but ultimately was removed from the team as the organization completely revamped their CS:GO division.
In 2020, mixwell officially jumped from CS:GO to Valorant when he received an offer from G2 Esports. The club did not see any major successes with the roster at S-Tier events, and eventually, mixwell jumped to Team Heretics. Team Heretics struggled in 2023, finishing only 8th out of 10 in the VCT EMEA League, but the team offers mixwell much more than just competitive opportunities.
Team Heretics is a Spanish esports organisation with a focus on streaming and content. The team seems like a perfect match for mixwell, a Spanish esports professional who also streams. Mixwell was an established name in live-streaming before joining Team Heretics, but the team was a welcome boost to his live-streaming statistics and he managed to reach 1M Followers on Twitch in 2023.
Mixwell is not only a popular Spanish creator who streams himself in Ranked but he also covers major Valorant events as a Spanish-speaking community caster. He is one of the biggest Spanish-speaking community broadcasters for Valorant, and his most-watched and most popular content of every year since 2021 has been his Champions coverage.
League of Legends
agurin
Agurin is our second German-speaking content creator to focus on League of Legends in our ranking, and the Turkish-German streamer ranks 7th despite only 340K Followers on Twitch. Agurin is most well-known on Twitch for his Ranked content, but he has also streamed his POV of events and tournaments before.
It’s no coincidence that two German-speaking League of Legends creators ranked on this list, as both of them represent the same team: No Need Orga. Agurin fulfils the Jungler role for the team while NoWay is a Mid Laner. Competing on the same team as NoWay may have exposed agurin to his teammate’s pre-existing Twitch audience, helping agurin to set himself up as a larger-scale content creator.
Similar to other smaller creators on this ranking we’ve looked at, agurin compensates for his comparatively lower Follower count by streaming daily and often for multiple hours. Agurin has been live for well over 200 hours a month on average throughout the recent months, and his dedication to his audience and stream has rewarded him with over 3M hours of watch time for the past three months.
Fighting Games
Daigo Umehara
Daigo “DaigoTheBeasTv” Umehara is one of the most famous names in Fighting Games history, and at 42 years of age, he is the oldest and longest-competing esports professional on this list. Daigo has been developing his esports career for two decades and accumulated 6 EVO Championships for various games during this period.
Not restricted to one single game, Daigo managed a monstrous run of EVO events, where he was a double champion two years in a row. Daigo was able to win the 2003 EVO event for Street Fighter II and also win the Guilter Gear XX event in the same year of EVO. This double championship wasn’t enough for Daigo, and he went back to EVO in 2004 to achieve the exact same thing.
Although Daigo boasts only 382K Followers on Twitch, he is a legend among old-school fighting game fans in both the East and West. Daigo took a break from streaming from early 2022 to early 2023, and ultimately returned to begin practice and competing in the recently released Street Fighter 6. Daigo’s SF6 streams are some of the most-watched for the game on Twitch, as fans from all around the world scramble to watch the legend hone his skills.
League of Legends
Jankos
Coming in fourth on the rankings is Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski, giving us a break from Shooter disciplines. Jankos is a League of Legends esports professional and has been competing in the European league since 2014. He was the first-ever player to win 300 matches in the LEC, but his accolades don’t end there.
Jankos has defeated all of his competitors in 5 different LEC Splits. He was the ultimate champion for the Spring 2022, Summer 2020, Spring 2020, Summer 2019, and Spring 2019 splits. He also achieved success in more international events, winning the Mid-Season Invitational in 2019 and finishing 2nd at Worlds in the same year.
In terms of live-streaming, Jankos’ most-watched content includes his League of Legends ranked games where he races to the number one rank in the region. Jankos is the only Polish esports competitor to feature on our rankings, and he is by far the most popular League of Legends professional in live-streaming right now. Over the last three months, he received over 2M Hours Watched: more than double the watch time of his closest competitor from League of Legends.
Valorant
TenZ
Last but not least on our rankings is Tyson “TenZ” Ngo, the sweetheart of Valorant esports. TenZ is another ex-Counter-Strike turned Valorant professional, although his time in CS:GO was much less successful than the other ex-pros on this ranking. TenZ made his way through Tier-3 and Tier-2 CS:GO in North America beginning in 2017, and he finally reached the top tier of NA CS:GO when he joined Cloud9 in 2019.
TenZ’s stint at Cloud9 was short and he quickly moved to a streamer position within the organisation. Eventually, he moved to Cloud9’s new Valorant roster but struggled to win events. TenZ’s real success in Valorant would come when he joined Sentinals in 2021, where he has stayed since. TenZ and Sentinals enjoyed great success in 2021, winning multiple Challengers events and eventually winning the Stage 2 Masters Reykjavík event. Sentinels continued to win Challengers events in 2021, but this would be the end of their dominance.
TenZ stepped away from streaming after 2021, perhaps feeling the need to dedicate more of his team to his team, but the roster continued to struggle both internationally and in the regional league. In the midst of personal issues in 2023, TenZ has streamed less and less, but his status as the golden boy of NA Valorant hasn’t gone away.
Across the past three months, TenZ has been live for roughly a quarter of the time that s0m has been broadcasting, but despite this disadvantage, TenZ continues to bring in impressive viewership numbers and rank as the 5th most-watched esports professional in live-streaming.
Video games remain the beating heart of live-streaming to this day, and as long as video games rule the industry, esports will have a place in the hearts of countless live-streaming enthusiasts. Esports professionals today face a double career, both competing in major events but also the ability to captivate fans with their skills and personalities. Keep track of the fastest-growing and most popular esports professionals in the live-streaming ecosystem with Streams Charts and our viewership statistics databases.
