In Q1 2025, there were several notable shifts in the livestreaming landscape. First, we've included TikTok Live statistics in our report, and it has now surpassed Twitch in terms of watch hours. Additionally, we’re seeing positive growth for Kick, a seasonal dip in Korean services SOOP Korea and CHZZK, and a challenging period for NimoTV, Bigo LIVE, and SOOP Global. Notably, Rumble continues to thrive, riding the wave of interest generated by the latest hot topics in American politics.
Main takeaways:
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YouTube Live remains the most-watched streaming platform in the industry, thanks to its significant share of non-gaming content, particularly sports and news broadcasts. While YouTube Live continues to grow in total watch hours, the growth rate has slowed considerably. In the Q1 2024, the platform saw a 25% increase, but in the Q1 2025, the growth was only 3.4%.
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TikTok Live claimed approximately 27% of total watch hours across the industry during the Q1 2025. It is now the second most watched streaming platform, right after YouTube Live.
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Twitch remains the leading platform for gaming streams and esports — in the Q1 2025, gaming streams generated over 3.74 billion watch hours, making up 12.5% of the total watch hours across the entire industry.
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Kick continues its rapid growth. In 2024, the green platform consistently added 15% to 20% to its watch hours each quarter, and this trend has carried over into the Q1 2025.
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SOOP Korea has experienced a decline due to decreased activity in the League of Legends esports scene, compared to Q4 2024.
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Thanks to political talk shows and U.S. news coverage, Rumble maintains a strong presence.
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In 2025, only four streaming platforms saw growth in watch hours: YouTube Live, TikTok Live, Kick, and Trovo. Twitch, CHZZK, and Rumble had minimal declines, within a margin of error of 1-2%. Meanwhile, SOOP Korea, SOOP Global, NimoTV, SteamTV, and Bigo LIVE experienced much sharper declines.
In Q1 2025, the total watch hours for the livestreaming industry surpassed 29.7 billion. This figure is notably higher than the previous quarter, largely due to the inclusion of data from TikTok Live. While the share of other platforms has shifted, the changes are not drastic.
YouTube Live continues to be the dominant streaming platform, accounting for more than 50% of total watch hours for the quarter. TikTok Live has moved into second place, surpassing Twitch due to its significant share of IRL content. In Q1 2025, TikTok Live generated over 8 billion watch hours, representing about 27% of the total watch hours across all platforms.
Twitch remains in the top three streaming platforms and continues to lead in gaming and esports streams, having captured 16.3% of total watch hours for the quarter across all platforms. Together, YouTube Live, TikTok Live, and Twitch dominate the market, accounting for over 93% of all viewership.
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YouTube Live streams generated nearly 15 billion watch hours in Q1 2025, showing a modest increase from the previous quarter. Interestingly, the share of gaming content on YouTube Gaming dropped slightly, from 15.7% to 14%. This was partly due to the absence of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang tournaments early in the year. The game’s regional, major circuits like the MPL didn’t start until March, by which time most of the quarter had already passed.
TikTok Live saw over 8 billion watch hours in Q1 2025, marking a 30% increase from the previous quarter. This impressive growth was largely driven by IRL content. However, gaming and esports streams on TikTok Live are also gaining traction, particularly in titles like MLBB and Garena Free Fire. Notably, the Free Fire World Series regional tournaments took place earlier this year in Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia.
Twitch's metrics have remained nearly unchanged from Q4 2024. The total watch hours and the volume of its gaming streams both decreased by 1-2%, which is within the margin of statistical error. Twitch continues to be the leading platform for gaming and esports streams.
Outside the top three, Kick remains the leader among the other platforms — it's been growing for several quarters in a row. In Q1 2025, Kick's streams generated over 863 million watch hours, an 18% increase from the previous quarter. Notably, the start of the year has been very successful for Kick — in March, the platform set new records for both watch hours and average viewers. Additionally, Kick has seen consistent growth in its Average Channels metric over the past few months.
Read also: Kick in March 2025: New all-time platform records
Korean platforms SOOP Korea and CHZZK experienced a slight decline in their metrics following growth in Q4 2024. This drop is partly due to a slower start to 2025 in terms of esports. For instance, the 2024 World Championship generated far more watch hours on SOOP Korea and CHZZK compared to the LCK Cup 2025 and First Stand 2025.
NimoTV continues to lose audience engagement, and in Q1 2025, the platform's total watch hours saw another decline. A similar drop was observed on Rumble, though it was minimal — the platform remains highly popular in North America thanks to its news and political broadcasts. This is especially the case now, with constant coverage of news about the economy, tariffs, and White House insights dominating global media. For Rumble streamers, this provides an almost endless source of content.
Steam's total watch hours dropped by 24% compared to the previous quarter, although the platform showed a strong performance in March. Trovo saw a slight increase in watch hours, driven by Russian-language streams of Lineage II. Bigo Live and SOOP Global remain at the bottom of the overall rankings, with the lowest watch hours and a sharp decline in metrics compared to the previous quarter.
YouTube Live viewership statistics for Q1 2025
YouTube Live saw a slight increase in watch hours compared to the previous quarter, with two months surpassing 5 billion watch hours. February fell behind this milestone due to having fewer days than other months in the quarter.
YouTube Live remains the top platform for IRL content in livestreaming. While Gaming topped the category rankings, non-gaming content collectively generates far more watch hours. As usual, News & Politics, Entertainment, and Music are among the most popular categories.
Read also: CazeTV's Paulistão livestream enters YouTube Live's all-time top 10
Brazilian streamer Casimiro ‘’CazéTV’’ Miguel leads the platform in watch hours, covering matches from the Brazilian football league. His streams consistently attract millions of viewers, making Cazé the most popular sports channel in livestreaming. Alongside him, channels like ABS-CBN and Al Jazeera Arabic also rank highly in watch hours, providing round-the-clock coverage of global news, politics, and more.
YouTube Gaming's statistics for Q1 2025 were noticeably lower than the previous quarter. In October of last year, YouTube Gaming streams generated a total of 1.24 billion watch hours, but by January, this dropped almost by half to 683 million hours. The reasons for this decline are straightforward: it's a natural dip following the busy Q4 2024, which featured several major esports tournaments. During that period, many viewers tuned in for streams of the 2024 World Championship and the M6 World Championship. For 2025 so far, however, there were no major tournaments.
Read also: IShowSpeed trip in South America: most popular countries and top moments
The top streamer in the YouTube Gaming section for Q1 2025 was American creator Darren ‘’IShowSpeed’’ Watkins Jr. For the first quarter, he didn’t focus much on gaming streams — he had a few short marathons of Red Dead Redemption 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds, along with several streams of Fortnite, but generally IRL was his home. IShowSpeed’s primary focus was on IRL content: he documented his travels through Latin America and China, participated in the Sidemen Charity Match 2025, Match for Hope 2025, and attended both Super Bowl LIX and Royal Rumble 2025.
TikTok Live viewership statistics for Q1 2025
TikTok Live ranks second, after YouTube Live, in watch hours for the quarter. It's ideal for IRL streams, as it enables users to broadcast from their smartphones while outdoors or traveling. This is why the Outdoors category consistently remains one of the top-ranking categories.
TikTok Live is also highly popular for streams from online stores, as well as broadcasts about fashion, clothing, cosmetics, and more. All of this, and much more, can be found in the Fashion category.
When it comes to gaming streams, TikTok Live features many broadcasts of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, PUBG Mobile, and Garena Free Fire. It’s no surprise that mobile esports dominate on a platform so focused on mobile content.
Twitch viewership statistics for Q1 2025
Twitch's watch hours remained largely stable compared to the end of last year, with a small dip in February. The rankings of the most-watched streamers saw minimal changes — four out of the top five were the same as in the Q4 2024 rankings. This time, the most-watched streamer was Marc ‘’Caedrel’’ Lamont — the British League of Legends community caster rose to the top thanks to broadcasts of NLC Winter 2025 and EMEA Masters Winter 2025.
Following Caedrel were American streamers Zack ‘’zackrawrr’’ Hoyt, Kai Cenat, and Hasan ‘’HasanAbi’’ Piker, who regularly appear in our monthly rankings. Japanese streamer 加藤純一うん〇ちゃん (kato_junichi0817) was a newcomer to the top five, having gained a lot of watch hours in Q1 2025 thanks to his Valorant streams covering VALORANT Challengers Japan 2025 and other tournaments on his channel.
As for the most-watched categories on Twitch, there were few changes compared to the previous quarter. Just Chatting remains the undisputed leader, while League of Legends, Grand Theft Auto V, and Counter-Strike continue to hold top spots among games. The only change was in fifth place, where Valorant bumped Fortnite down, thanks to the early start of the VCT 2025 partnership leagues.
Kick viewership statistics for Q1 2025
Kick remains the "home platform" for streamers from the MENA region and Latin America. In March, the platform set several new records and continues to strengthen its position in the industry. Notably, compared to the previous quarter, Kick saw a complete reshuffle in the top five most-watched streamers. Instead of Luis ‘’Westcol’’ Álvarez, Mikyle ‘’n3on’’ Rafiq, and Félix ‘’xQc’’ Lengyel, now came top creators from MEAN and LATAM, like Ilyas El Maliki, Stiven ‘’MrStivenTc’’ Caicedo, and Andy ‘’ElZeein’’ Ramirez.
Moroccan streamer Ilyas El Maliki also became the platform’s most popular streamer for the quarter, peaking at 601,000 viewers. This milestone occurred in January during the broadcast of the Kings World Cup Nations 2025 semifinal, where Morocco faced off against Colombia. It's worth mentioning that El Maliki was the president of the Moroccan team and streamed their matches on his Kick channel.
In March, Kick's watch hours saw a significant increase compared to February. The most-watched stream of the month came from Turkish streamer Bahadır ‘’purplebixi’’ Telci, who covered the protests in Istanbul on his channel.
SOOP Korea (ex-AfreecaTV) viewership statistics for Q1 2025
The Korean platform SOOP Korea saw a 12% drop in watch hours compared to the previous quarter. As mentioned earlier, this decline is partly due to fewer major events in the League of Legends esports scene. However, among the platform's most-watched streamers, 김민교 (phonics1) and 이상호 (lshooooo), popular Korean community casters who cover nearly all major tournaments for the game, remain at the top.
StarCraft streams are also incredibly popular on the platform — the game is considered iconic in South Korea, and many fans believe it marked the beginning of the esports industry. Minecraft is another popular game on SOOP Korea, particularly favored by VTubers who frequently play on the same servers.
Naver’s CHZZK viewership statistics for Q1 2025
CHZZK also experienced a decline in watch hours compared to the previous quarter, though not as significant as SOOP Korea’s drop. This is because CHZZK’s stats are less reliant on community casting and esports in general. The platform primarily features traditional gaming streamers who enjoy playing story-driven titles or MMORPGs. Additionally, CHZZK has a large number of VTubers and female streamers with a loyal following.
The most-watched streamer on CHZZK in the first quarter was 한동숙 (handongsuk), a big fan of League of Legends and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. He was one of the top Korean streamers on Twitch last year, but switched to CHZZK after Twitch was blocked in South Korea.
SOOP Global viewership statistics for Q1 2025
In the first quarter of 2025, SOOP Global’s performance has declined for the second quarter in a row. For Q1, streams on the platform generated around 3 million watch hours, down from over 5 million watch hours just six months ago. The platform’s primary audience still consists of viewers from Thailand and neighboring Southeast Asian countries like South Korea. In addition to regular gaming and IRL streamers, official Valorant esports channels and channels that broadcast traditional sports (mostly baseball) contribute significantly to the platform’s overall statistics.
NimoTV viewership statistics for Q1 2025
NimoTV is having a hard time — six months ago, the platform generated over 269 million watch hours, but in the last quarter, it dropped to just 204 million watch hours. The content on the platform remains limited in variety, with most of the top streamers focusing on GTA V or League of Legends. The list of top streamers for the last quarter has also seen little change.
Rumble viewership statistics for Q1 2025
Rumble's performance has remained largely unchanged compared to the previous quarter. The platform saw its peak popularity in November 2024, thanks to the U.S. presidential elections. Afterward, there was a drop in December (from 62 million watch hours to 34.5 million), but by the first quarter of 2025, the situation had stabilized. Rumble is now one of the top streaming platforms for American politics and Republican Party supporters. It features numerous political programs and talk shows where hosts constantly discuss breaking news, insider info from the White House, Donald Trump’s statements, scandals involving Elon Musk, and more. The news cycle in American politics is still very heated, and Rumble streamers are benefiting from this.
Trovo viewership statistics for Q1 2025
Trovo saw a slight boost after the New Year holidays, and in the first quarter of 2025, it recorded slightly more watch hours compared to the end of 2024. This growth can be attributed to the launch of Scryde, a new major Lineage II server that drew a large Russian-speaking audience, with many players from this server choosing to stream on Trovo. However, as the initial excitement around the server’s launch began to fade, Lineage II streams became less popular. As a result, Trovo's viewer statistics have gradually declined, which is reflected in the monthly charts.
Steam viewership statistics for Q1 2025
On the Steam platform, streams primarily focus on new game releases available on the marketplace. The start of the year was relatively quiet in terms of big releases, but February and March brought a wave of exciting titles, including Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Monster Hunter Wild, Split Fiction, InZOI, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and others. These games contributed to a slight increase in Steam's stats in March.
Bigo LIVE viewership statistics for Q1 2025
Bigo LIVE continues to face challenges — the number of watch hours generated on the platform has decreased for the third consecutive quarter. Over the past six months, this number has been cut in half, and there are no signs that the situation will improve anytime soon. Bigo LIVE's primary audience is in the MENA region, where many viewers prefer watching Kick. With such fierce competition, Bigo LIVE's future looks uncertain.
