Throughout the third quarter of 2024, the global livestreaming landscape shifted slightly, with many platforms undergoing some serious changes. YouTube Live lost a significant portion of viewership, and it’s gaming section has fallen behind Twitch’s. Kick continued the trend of increasing viewership quarter-on-quarter with some of its most-watched months, and the South Korean market is finally settling down.
Main takeaways:
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YouTube Gaming lost more than a quarter of its total viewership. Although there were many esports events for YouTube-based audiences throughout the quarter, the gaming side of the platform suffered from low viewership throughout the Q3 months.
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Twitch maintained its overall watch time compared to the previous quarter, although its gaming section lost a minor amount of viewership. Nevertheless, in comparison to its main rival YouTube Gaming, Twitch has pulled a significant lead ahead of the red platform.
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AfreecaTV furthered its lead as the largest South Korean livestreaming platform. It was a platform of choice for Koreans throughout Q3 instead of Naver’s CHZZK, which has seen viewership plateau, and SOOP, which is now home to a thriving Thai streaming community.
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Mildom shut down towards the end of Q3, recording some of the lowest viewership in its dying days. Other small platforms like Bigo LIVE and TROVO remained relatively stable compared to last quarter.
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Rumble enjoyed significant boosts, powered by coverage of the ongoing presidential election in the United States. The platform has always been political, and the current news state of the US is ideal for Rumble’s growth.
YouTube Live recorded 13.172B Hours Watched in Q3 2024, marking a 13.6% downturn in total viewership. Even worse, YouTube Gaming recorded a larger drop in viewership for the quarter, roughly one fourth of its Q2 watch time. Despite the three-month period being full of exciting esports events to delight fans, viewership for YouTube Gaming throughout Q3 fell by about 27%.
Kick continued to extend the lead ahead of other smaller platforms, recording 15.6% growth for the quarter. Kick achieved massive viewership peaks in Q2 earlier this year, but Q3 was more stable and calm. Although the platform did not record any million-viewer peaks, it still collected record-breaking watch time in July and August, constantly reaching new heights.
AfreecaTV has solidified its place as the premiere gaming livestreaming platform for South Koreans. Although Naver’s CHZZK has been a massive success as a new entry to the industry, its growth has slowed down, whereas Afreeca has increased its viewership by 50% for Q3. The other new entry to the industry SOOP has been overtaken by Thai streamers, with effectively all of its viewership for the quarter coming from this region. Although the platform has not connected with the South Korean audience its creators would have hoped for, it has still generated an impressive watch time for the quarter.
Taking a look at the industry as a whole, these major livestreaming platforms generated 19.757B Hours Watched in Q3 of 2024. YouTube was the largest contributor to this total, making up 66.7% of all watch time, and Twitch followed with 25%. For livestreaming viewership in the third quarter of 2024, YouTube Live made up a tidy two-thirds of the industry, and Twitch a round quarter.
CHZZK has established itself as an impressive new contender in the livestreaming industry. The platform has quickly found an audience for itself, already surpassing Rumble and a selection of other platforms. The challenge for Naver’s CHZZK will be finding more Korean viewers, competing against the established AfreecaTV.
YouTube Live viewership statistics for Q3 2024
YouTube saw its overall viewership drop throughout Q3 2024. July and August were poor months in particular, recording only slightly more than 4B Hours Watched. This viewership does still represent growth for the platform in comparison to 2023, but in terms of the 2024 viewership the platform has received so far this year, Q3 marked some of the platform’s least-watched months.
As political elections heat up all over the world, News & Politics overtook Entertainment to become the most-watched YouTube Live category of the quarter. YouTube has become a serious competitor for traditional news media in many countries, with official news organizations broadcasting for free on YouTube Live, as well as politicians and governments themselves. In this same way, in countries like Brazil, YouTube competes strongly against traditional media for football live coverage, with football broadcaster CazéTV emerging as the quarter’s most-watched streamer.
Across YouTube Gaming, the downturn in viewership was only more significant, with July and August once again reporting significantly lower viewership than the platform has enjoyed in previous quarters. The MPL Indonesia continued to dominate the platform, receiving the most viewership of the quarter for its coverage of the Mobile Legends Bang Bang Pro League in Indonesia.
League of Legends was also a popular esports title, with the official League of Legends Championship Korea YouTube channel leading the way as one of the platform’s most popular channels. Garena Free Fire was highly popular with Vietnamese fans, and Battlegrounds Mobile India appealed to viewers from its home country. Despite YouTube Gaming appealing to a wide variety of global audiences through its esports coverage, the platform hasn’t been able to capture the attention of esports fans to the same level it managed in Q2.
Twitch viewership statistics for Q3 2024
Twitch recorded stable viewership throughout the entire quarter. The livestreaming platform enjoyed high viewership for its esports coverage of League of Legends through community casters ibai and Caedrel. Just Chatting and Grand Theft Auto V remain the platform’s most popular categories, with the remaining top 5 places filled with esports titles.
With Twitch having officially exited from South Korea earlier this year, Japanese audiences are now one of the few large Asian audiences present on the platform. Japan streamers previously held highly popular esports event coverage, but Q3 saw fewer Japanese stars co-cast matches and tournaments.
Twitch’s viewership was stable month-on-month through the quarter, too. Although the platform enjoyed a boost from esports events like YouTube Gaming, it did not record the same drop in viewership that YouTube Live saw. The purple platform must continue to grow if it wants to keep YouTube Gaming in its rearview mirror, but as it stands, the platform remains strong.
Kick viewership statistics for Q3 2024
Kick’s viewership calmed down from the massive peak viewerships it reached during Q2 of this year, but the green platform continued its overall watch time growth compared to last quarter. Q3 of 2024 marked the first time that Kick broke the 200M Hours Watched mark in a month, having also achieved this feat twice in a row.
Kick continues to draw high viewership from the MENA region, as well as the Americas. These MENA and Latin American streamers are generally more popular than North American broadcasters on the platform, but Adin Ross and xQc continued to hold a place among the platform’s top channels. Adin Ross was previously Kick’s most popular streamer, but he has slowly been overtaken as the platform has found large audiences in MENA and South America.
Kick has now set an even higher bar for itself in terms of watch time. Each quarter, the green platform continues to set itself ahead of the other global livestreaming platforms, and it seems to be the only competitor on-track to eventually compete alongside Twitch and YouTube Live.
AfreecaTV viewership statistics for Q3 2024
AfreecaTV had a dominant Q3 of 2024, setting itself ahead of other South Korean competitors and cementing itself as the country’s most popular livestreaming option. The platform has not only enjoyed a wave of viewership for League of Legends esports events, but AfreecaTV’s general popularity as an entertainment and social platform has continued to grow.
Many of the platform’s top streamers remain the same, but the new audience attracted to AfreecaTV is undeniable. Following Twitch’s exit from South Korea, AfreecaTV has enjoyed significantly more traffic to its site, and September marked the most-watched month in its history. With 141.5M Hours Watched achieved last month, the platform has set high expectations for itself in the remainder of 2024.
NimoTV viewership statistics for Q3 2024
NimoTV continued to be dominated by Vietnamese viewership. The platform recorded a drop in viewership for the final month of the quarter, and generally, viewership has fallen significantly this year. Perhaps the biggest worry for NimoTV is the large Vietnamese esports audiences on YouTube Live, which has enjoyed most of the Vietnamese viewership for the ongoing League of Legends 2024 World Championship.
NimoTV has lost its hold on Vietnamese fans, and it continues to record lower viewership year after year since 2021. YouTube Live is seeing more and more Vietnamese streamers emerge on the platform, and as it stands, it appears that YouTube Live has taken a significant portion of the total Vietnamese viewership previously enjoyed by NimoTV.
Naver’s CHZZK viewership statistics for Q3 2024
CHZZK was released earlier this year, and Q3 saw its viewership relax. The platform’s viewership has remained stable compared to last quarter, marked by a slight 5% drop in watch time. It seems that CHZZK has found its popularity ceiling as the hype around the new platform has worn off, nevertheless, a new livestreaming platform recording more than 174M in a single quarter is massively impressive: CHZZK has already overtaken many of the minor livestreaming platforms tracked by Streams Charts.
Last quarter, it seemed that CHZZK was on-track to compete with AfreecaTV as the leading livestreaming platform for Korea, but this seems unlikely for now. CHZZK has still established itself as a significant livestreaming platform with a large audience, and AfreecaTV will have to keep a keen eye on their competitor: the gap between the two platforms may not be as large as it seems.
Rumble viewership statistics for Q3 2024
Rumble enjoyed strong viewership results throughout Q3 of 2024, although viewership fell slightly towards the end of the quarter. The platform has become the home for American political content, and viewership for the platform has enjoyed a boost from the current presidential election in the United States, and the overall news-worthy stories emerging from the country.
All of Rumble’s most popular channels reflect news coverage or political commentary, and thus the platform will likely record strong viewership results towards the end of the year, as the election heats up and collects momentum.
Trovo viewership statistics for Q3 2024
Trovo’s viewership fell slightly in this quarter, but its top channels and categories were relatively static compared to Q2 2024. The platform has been on a downwards trend throughout the year so far, and Trovo has continued to see its viewership slip away.
Trovo has appeared to have its place in the livestreaming industry taken by newcomers like Kick, who appeal to the same target audiences as Trovo. In the future, expect Trovo’s viewership to continue to fall as more and more streamers are attracted to Kick, unless something major changes for Trovo.
BIGO Live viewership statistics for Q3 2024
Bigo LIVE recorded a drop in viewership similar to Trovo, but the platform’s low viewership was concentrated particularly in August and September. The platform’s primary target audiences in the Americas have again been poached by Kick, which has cemented itself as a leading global platform for Latin and South American audiences.
Smaller platforms like Trovo and Bigo LIVE are unable to compete with Kick’s rapid growth, and these platforms have poor prospects ahead of them coming into 2025.
SOOP by AfreecaTV viewership statistics for Q3 2024
SOOP, one of the new livestreaming platforms emerging from South Korea, collected its first full quarter of watch time in Q3 this year. The platform was launched by AfreecaTV to appeal to a more global audience outside of Korea, but despite the platform launching to lots of Korean celebrities and fans supporting the new site, Koreans are not watching SOOP any more. The platform’s viewership came overwhelmingly from Thai audiences, with a minor group of English-language streams also contributing.
As it stands, Korean viewership makes up less than 1% of total watch time on SOOP. Although the platform was originally launched to connect with Korean audiences, it has since found significant viewership from Thai streamers in a stroke of luck. It is unclear how the platform will proceed in the future, whether it will attempt to reach a wider global audience, or if it will embrace its luck and set down roots in Thailand.
Mildom viewership statistics for Q3 2024
Mildom was officially shut down by DouYu Japan on the 1st of September 2024. The platform launched in 2019, and found some viewership through Japanese streamers, but it was never able to compete with the likes of Twitch and YouTube Live when it came to the amount of Japanese streamers and celebrities based on the platform.
The platform was closed following significantly and continuously falling viewership numbers, which have been declining since the beginning of 2024. Looking back towards Mildom’s viewership trajectory across the years, it is hard not to compare with Trovo and Bigo LIVE’s current results. The Japanese platform was replaced by other larger livestreaming platforms, which could be the future of Trovo and Bigo LIVE with Kick.