The live-streaming scene in 2023 was anything but dull, with changes in personnel at various platforms and the emergence of a few pretenders making things interesting. There were also obligatory policy changes and events that made the news for good or bad, meaning fans and followers got a steady dose of news throughout the last 12 months.
Moving to the focus of this article — the fourth quarter — most of the big names saw increases in their watch time, including Twitch and YouTube. A major factor for this growth was the success of festive broadcasts for Christmas and various in-game events, especially The Big Bang in Fortnite, which brought the game back to the forefront of the purple platform's gaming machinery after years.
Main takeaways
- October and December were huge for YouTube Live, ending as the only two months to cross 3.3B Hours Watched, with the latter registering a huge 3.57B HW, the first time it crossed this mark.
- Twitch also shone in the last month of the year, hitting 2023 records for Peak Viewers, Active Channels, and Peak Channels, while the watch time crossed 1.79B hours for only the second time.
- After two sedate months that snapped its remarkable streak of improving its watch time every single month of 2023, Kick ended on a high, shattering the 110M HW barrier for the first time in the year.
- Rumble's best month came in October, registering 45M HW and 61.5K Average Viewers, both platform records, and the only times these numbers were reached in 2023.
- AfreecaTV saw a small recovery after lagging behind in the third quarter, where it fell below 280M HW for the first time.
- Most of the other, smaller streaming services ended the year with their viewership statistics continuing to fall, and 2024 could be a make-or-break one for a few of them.
YouTube Live viewer statistics in Q4 2023
YouTube Live overall saw a significant rise of 21.58% in its fourth quarter watch time, helping end a second half that began with pretty tame August figures of 1.96B HW on a high. December was also its most successful month, hitting records for Peak Channels, Average Viewers, Average Channels, and Hours Watched while also ensuring all its metrics at increases of at least 9%.
Moreover, October was its highest when it comes to Active Channels, meaning there is no doubt the last one was the most successful quarter for the red platform in 2023. Similar to Q3, the last quarter was also filled with channels in the News and Politics when it comes to the most watched ones across the year.
Switching to gaming, YouTube Gaming took up 12.72% of the overall watch time, with December being the highest at 467.89M HW. This was a fall of 3.9% from the previous quarter, but that was also because there was a lot of content in the Non-Gaming segment thanks to the holiday and New Year festivities.
The most watched games list was a mix of PC and mobile titles, with regular entries like League of Legends, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and Grand Theft Auto V accompanied by a peculiar name in Subway Surfers, a game developed for smartphones but one that has taken on a life of its own online more than a decade after its highly-lucrative release.
Twitch viewer statistics in Q4 2023
Twitch was more or less back on track in Q4, with all three months crossing 1.7B HW after a dip in September. December also saw 2023 highs for Active Channels, Peak Viewers, and Peak Channels, no doubt helped by the excitement around the already-mentioned OG season of Fortnite.
The fourth quarter also saw the same games take up space at the top of the ladder behind the usual leader, Just Chatting, when it comes to total watch time. Epic Games' builder shooter was second when it came to most growth in the top ten (at a massive 121%) behind EA Sports FC 24 ridiculous 200%, with League of Legends, Grand Theft Auto V, World of Warcraft, Dota 2, Minecraft, and Valorant, also spikes in their tri-monthly watch times.
Overall, gaming took up a whopping 83.50% of the Amazon-owned company's watch time in this phase, continuing to highlight just how much reliance it has on video games for its sustenance. Further proof of this fact is that most of the platform's most-watched influencers were gaming creators associated with some of the most prominent titles globally.
Kick viewer statistics in Q4 2023
Kick's 2023 was a great reminder of the potential of streaming websites that manage to penetrate a market dominated by the two names mentioned above. Of course, its penchant for opening its arms to controversial names who may have burned bridges with the big two may not be everyone's cup of tea, but the numbers suggest that such online stars are helping it make a pretty comfortable space as the third-best platform globally.
Q4 was its most successful last year, being the only one to see it touch 112M HW in all three months. While many still scoff at the idea of its Slots & Casino genre being a sticking point due to its pitfalls and the influence it could have on audiences, especially the younger demographic, there is no doubt that last year was a watershed one for the green platform, with things only looking to get better as we roll into 2024.
AfreecaTV viewer statistics in Q4 2023
AfreecaTV had the record-breaking LoL World Championship to thank for a good end to a steady year. However, the numbers were still a big fall from what it registered in 2022, with the fourth quarter's fall of 20.7% year-on-year a microcosm of this trend for the Korean site.
Nimo TV viewer statistics in Q4 2023
A great Q3 that saw Nimo TV recover from a rough second quarter gave way to a less than satisfactory end to the calendar year. If October saw the watch time fall below 100M hours for the first time in 2023, it fell to 69.8M HW the next month. December saw it go down even further to 47.17M HW, this was a clear indication of the Chinese streaming service's falling stock at the end of a sobering 12 months.
Rumble viewer statistics in Q4 2023
October was the best month of 2023 by far for this site, but it did end on a slight dampener in the last two months. November and December saw consecutive falls of 28% and 9%, meaning that despite the fourth quarter being its best, viewers lost interest in its content heading into the new year.
Again, it has to be stressed that the majority of channels on Rumble are from America and lean toward political and religious debates and dialogue, which are not everyone's cup of tea when it comes to seeking online entertainment. However, the focus on such genres has also helped it garner a loyal user base that hangs onto every word of its top content creators.
Trovo viewer statistics in Q4 2023
Owned by Tencent Games, this Chinese video game live-streaming site's 2023 was a far cry from the 43.61m HW that it hit in April 2022. Trovo’s best month last year was February, when it notched just 15.90M HW, with this metric falling under the 10M HW mark thrice in 12 months. The fourth quarter also saw a dip compared to Q3, with November and December accounting for two of the three months where it settled in the 9M HWs.
Bigo LIVE viewer statistics in Q4 2023
This Singapore-based global social live-streaming platform owned by BIGO Technology has seen an improvement in its month-on-month watch time only six times over 2022 and 2023. Last year, in fact, saw only one such instance, with Bigo LIVE’s numbers falling drastically and ending at a paltry 5.52M HW in December.
Nonolive viewer statistics in Q4 2023
Nonolive ended the year with a damp squib despite the first three quarters showing promising figures. In fact, the watch time fell so drastically that December only barely scraped into the one million mark. One reason is that its main contributor, mobile games, is getting more popular on the biggest platforms, taking away its audiences almost consistently across 2023.
Mildom viewer statistics in Q4 2023
Mildom rounds off the list of lesser streaming services to see a downturn in fortunes in Q4, with November and December being the only two months that its watch time fell below a million hours. In fact, its year-on-year figures for the fourth quarter declined by 126%, although the largely Japanese-speaking audience preferred PC games like Fortnite, Minecraft, Valorant, and Apex Legends.