On February 12, NASA held their first ever Twitch-exclusive broadcast. The interactive broadcast was not NASA’s first nor most popular Twitch stream, and by a wide margin, but it does highlight how NASA believes Twitch can help them connect with new, younger space fanatics.
A week before the stream went live, NASA announced the broadcast in a news release. NASA’s first livestream created with Twitch in-mind saw viewers able to ask questions to NASA astronauts Matt Dominick and currently-ISS-based Don Pettit live through Twitch Chat, with the short Q&A session picking questions from fans.
In less than two hours, the stream recorded more than 20,800 Twitch Chat messages and a Chat Engagement Rate of 8.4%: for reference, this engagement was a percentage higher than Thomas “sodapoppin” Morris last Twitch stream, who currently sits as the 7th-most-watched Twitch streamer of the past week.
In total, NASA’s first Twitch-exclusive live broadcast reached just over 20,000 Hours Watched in under two hours. Viewership settled at a peak of just over 16,300 concurrent viewers, while NASA’s current record is just below 400,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch. NASA has also broadcast on YouTube Live in the past, where their current record viewership stands at over 721,000 Peak Viewers for the launch of Artemis 1 to the moon in 2022.
While the stream did not break any of NASA’s viewership records, it does mark the company moving to a more casual, digital method of communicating and engaging with fans. In the news release for the Twitch broadcast, NASA’s Brittany Brown was quoted on the importance of hosting streams on Twitch.
“This Twitch event from space is the first of many. We spoke with digital creators at TwitchCon about their desire for streams designed with their communities in mind, and we listened. In addition to our spacewalks, launches, and landings, we’ll host more Twitch-exclusive streams like this one. Twitch is one of the many digital platforms we use to reach new audiences and get them excited about all things space.”
Brittany Brown, Director of Digital Communications at NASA
The news release also went on to explain that the stream would “highlight ways for Twitch users to engage with NASA”. NASA is diving into the digital world to interact with young, digitally-native audiences, and Twitch is one of their prime options for connecting with these fans. While NASA has already found success with streams of mission launches and news breaks, their recent entry to Twitch marks a new era in livestreaming for them.
In the future, NASA’s popularity on Twitch could quickly rise, as the organization becomes acquainted with the culture of the platform, and viewers spread news through word-of-mouth of their new casually-orientated live events.
