As we settle into the third quarter of the year, we are busy analysing and going over all the data collected during Q2. Already we’ve published articles covering the most popular Twitch streamers, most-watched YouTube Gaming streamers, and an overall breakdown of our Q2 data for all platforms. In this piece we will take a look at the most-popular streamers from the USA, covering YouTube Gaming and Twitch, and Kick.
Most watched US streamers on Twitch, Q2 2023
Looking at the data for Twitch, tarik stands out ahead of the rest of the creators for Q2. The CS:GO Major winner turned Valorant streamer amassed 24.17M Hours Watched for the quarter, nearly entirely streaming Valorant. Tarik has found success not only playing Valorant and showcasing his aim but also as a community caster. Most recently and notably, tarik was a community caster for the VCT 2023 Masters Tokyo event. Travelling to Tokyo to host watch parties in person, tarik was the most-watched stream of the event, with 1.7M more Hours Watched than the official Valorant Twitch channel.
Second place went to KaiCenat. The hugely popular YouTuber started streaming on Twitch at the start of 2021 and has already developed a monster following of 6M on Twitch. For the last quarter, Kai garnered 18.39M Hours Watched, mainly streaming Just Chatting content but also hopping on trends and hype waves such as the Only Up! release. He reached the 6M follower milestone just earlier this month, but at the start of Q2 the streamer hadn’t reached even 5M followers, proof of his astronomical rise on Twitch. Also of note, Kai claimed second place with much less Airtime compared to his peers.
Finishing up the podium spots is Turkish-American streamer HasanAbi. The streamer and political commentator achieved 16.4M Hours Watched for Q2 and over 90% of his content remained in the Just Chatting section of Twitch. The only game that could draw Hasan’s attention away from Just Chatting was the release of the highly anticipated Diablo IV. The young Turk played the dungeon-crawler for 23 hours throughout the quarter, making it his second most streamed category behind Just Chatting.
Next on the list is the ubiquitous summit1g. Despite only landing fourth on our ranking for most-watched Twitch streamer, summit1g has the largest following out of anyone on the list, with 6.19M followers on Twitch. Summit has been active on Twitch for a decade now, and he’s become a household name for any fan of Shooter streamers. Although originally starting out as a CS:GO professional player, summit1g amassed 13.77M Hours Watched streaming mainly World of Warcraft. The American streamed the MMORPG for over 600 hours of Airtime during the quarter, and CS:GO came second just falling short of 300 hours. Although summit1g made fourth on our list, he did it with 1066 hours of airtime during the quarter, almost half of all total hours in Q2.
Next up is scump. Otherwise known as “The King of COD”, scump is a former Call of Duty professional player and CoD World Championship winner who reached 9.76M Hours Watched for Q2. Scump has been a streamer for years by this point, but his channel experienced massive growth coming into this year. Scump made it to the most-watched streamers for Q2 by taking a note out of tarik’s book: watch parties and costreams. Scump achieved great success costreaming various Call of Duty esports events, with a peak of 949K Hours Watched for a single stream.
Following closely on scump’s heels is zachrawrr, otherwise known as Asmongold. Zachrawrr is the secondary channel of Asmongold, and on his secondary channel, the streamer runs no ads and has subscriptions disabled. Initially, the OTK streamer moved over to a second channel claiming that streaming on his main channel was becoming too much stress. Throughout Q2 the channel reached 9.4M Hours Watched, mainly streaming Just Chatting content but also playing a healthy amount of Diablo IV and World of Warcraft.
Lirik is another streamer who’s been active on Twitch for over a decade, the Shooter fan is well-known for being skilled at every game he touches. Throughout Q2 the sharpshooter amassed 8.78M Hours Watched, focusing on his beloved Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. However, Lirik isn’t a one-trick pony and streams a large amount of variety content too. Lirik achieved over 1M Hours Watched streaming CS:GO and another million streaming Diablo IV. The streamer dipped his toes into everything he could, trying out Trackmania, The Legend of Zelda, and even Poker during the three months.
Our first VTuber of the list and the only woman, ironmouse took a spot on the list with 8.61M Hours Watched. The Puerto Rican streamer reached new heights with her recent subathon in June, easily her month successful month of the quarter. Ironmouse achieved 6.84M of her Hours Watched for the quarter in June alone and was live for 690 hours throughout the month. With the subathon finally behind her, the VTuber will be hoping to capitalise on this opportunity for growth throughout Q3.
The second last on the ranking is MOONMOON. The lunar streamer originally started out in 2016 streaming his Overwatch gameplay, but quickly outgrew the title and became a popular variety streamer. Although originally starting out streaming FPS games, MOONMOON wasn’t interested in headshots for Q2. The variety streamer focuses his content on Super Mario Maker 2, Darkest Dungeon II and Street Fighter 6. The American achieved 7.08M Hours Watched during Q2 and 1.49M of these were due to Super Mario Maker 2.
Last but not least rounding out our list of the most-watched Twitch streamers for the quarter is TSM_ImperialHal. The TSM-affiliated streamer reached 6.79M hours Watched for Q2, with a huge majority of these coming from his Apex Legends gameplay. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the streamer is currently a professional player for TSM in Apex Legends. Most recently ImperialHal found success at the ALGS Playoffs, achieving first place and taking home $300,000 USD for TSM. The Apex pro’s most popular content on Twitch remains his streams of competitive Apex Legends gameplay.
Most watched US streamers on YouTube Gaming, Q2 2023
Moving from Twitch to YouTube Gaming, TimTheTatman takes the top of the list with 5.5M Hours Watched. Tim originally started streaming on Twitch over a decade ago, but during this time he built up a following on his YouTube channel before announcing an exclusive contract to stream on YouTube Gaming in 2021. Tim is another old-school CS:GO player and streamer, but during Q2 Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 took the top spot, with over a hundred hours of Airtime. CS:GO and Fortnite were the runner-ups and TimTheTatman continues to stream a variety of mainly Shooter content.
Second place goes to Ludwig with 4.85M Hours Watched during the quarter. The YouTuber turned Twitch streamer turned YouTube Gaming streamer enjoys streaming variety content on his channel and rarely sticking to one game. Over the last quarter, Ludwig enjoyed success speedrunning Mario Party Superstars, playing various Pokémon games, and Valorant. The 2022 Streamer Awards’ Streamer of the Year continues to be successful in every aspect of content he explores.
Less than 200K Hours Watched separated Ludwig from third and fourth on the list, with IShowSpeed only 140K hours behind. IShowSpeed is one of the most-subscribed-to channels in YouTube Gaming and with only 146 hours of Airtime (the second lowest on this list), the creator managed to take third on this ranking.
DrDisRespect followed close behind, garnering 4.7M Hours Watched in the quarter. The Doc focused mainly on Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 but also experimented with some other games during this period. Ludwig, IShowSpeed, and DrDisRespect were all discussed in greater detail in our Top YouTube Gaming streamers of Q2 piece.
The next two spots on the list belong to Sykunno and Valkyrae. The two creators are good friends and both started streaming on Twitch before moving over to YouTube Gaming. Sykunno signed his contract with YouTube in 2021 and Valkyrae signed hers in 2020. The two streamers collaborate very often together, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they have similar statistics for Q2. Sykunno edged out Valkyrae, claiming the fifth spot with 2.42M Hours Watched. Valkyrae was close behind with 2.21M. Both streamers created content playing games such as Valorant, Minecraft, and Fortnite.
Following on from the two best friends is Swagg. Swagg is a streamer signed to FaZe Clan, well known for his Call of Duty gameplay. The FaZe member achieved 2.18M Hours Watched for the quarter and reached this through Call of Duty. In fact, for the entire Q2 time period Swagg streamed nothing but Call of Duty, except for a short excursion to Diablo IV and Only Up! for a few hours. The streamer’s most popular content for the quarter is as you’d expect him playing competitive Call of Duty Warzone.
KreekCraft came next, the Roblox creator managing to amass 1.76M Hours Watched for his live streams during Q2. Kreek is mainly known for his YouTube videos but also draws in a sizeable audience for his live content, averaging 17K viewers throughout this period. Excluding IShowSpeed, Kreek is actually the largest creator on this list in terms of subscribers on YouTube. The American currently has 7.84M subscribers on the platform, something that surely helps him to develop his audience for the live content. Proof of a large preexisting audience, Kreek claimed his spot on this list despite barely making 100 hours of Airtime for the quarter, the least of anyone on this list by a large margin.
Moving from Roblox back to variety, DrLupo claimed the second last spot on our list. Lupo signed an exclusive deal with Twitch back in 2019, but signed a new exclusivity deal with YouTube in 2021. The content creator takes his deals seriously, having streamed for 509 hours during Q2, the most out of anyone on this list for YouTube Gaming. Having achieved 1.47M Hours Watched for the quarter, Lupo mainly streamed popular games like Diablo IV, Minecraft, and Legend of Zelda. However, DrLupo was originally an FPS streamer. Games like Fortnite and Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 were also some of his most streamed games for the quarter.
Taking the ultimate spot on this ranking is fuslie. The 100T affiliated streamer is the only creator on this list to have less than 1M subscribers on YouTube. Despite her 839K subscribers on the platform, fuslie drew in a highly impressive 1.25M Hours Watched for the quarter, achieving this number with almost half the Airtime of DrLupo. Fuslie’s content mainly focusing on socialising and collaborating with her friends, and her top viewed content for the quarter was Grand Theft Auto V, Valorant, and Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel.
Interestingly, although the rankings of the streamers have changed since Q1, the top ten streamers for Q2 remain the exact same streamers as it was for Q1.
Most Watched US streamers on Kick, Q2 2023
Kick is the fastest-growing streaming platform according to Streams Charts’ own analysis, read more about that here.
Although still not the size of Twitch or YouTube Gaming, the streaming platform continues to grow and bring in new audiences.
Just last month both Amouranth and xQc signed contracts with the platform, which offers a more lucrative distribution model of profits for streamers. Although this was huge news, as it came so late during Q2 they did not manage to make the top rankings for Q2 on the platform. If you’re interested in the details of these two streaming behemoths joining the platform, check out our article here.
Adinross remains the king of Kick. His viewership continues to bloom alongside the growth of the platform and in Q2 he accumulated 16.71M Hours Watched. Adin is mainly a Just Chatting streamer but also dipped his toes into the Slots & Casinos category during Q2. he also holds the record for most concurrent viewers on the platform during Q2, with 189K Peak Viewers.
Iceposeidon took second, the creator amassed 4.31M Hours Watched during the quarter, a majority of this stemming from his IRL content. Originally gaining traction as an IRL streaming on Twitch, he reached peak prominence in 2017 before being banned from the platform. He eventually landed on Kick and has become one of the top streamers for the site. During Q2 he hosted a subathon and streamed his travels throughout Asia.
Rounding off the podium places is ac7tionman. The partnered streamer of Kick achieved 4.05M Hours Watched throughout the quarter, all of his content stemming from Just Chatting or other non-gaming categories. The streamer reached the most Airtime of any creator this popular on Kick, with 748 hours streamed.
Next up is destiny with 2.63M Hours Watched. The streamer officially announced at the end of June that he’d signed a new 12-month contract with Kick. The contract allows him to continue streaming on YouTube alongside his Kick streams, and the streamer teased the value of the contract, stating it wasn’t 8 figures, but he wouldn’t have taken it if it was 6 figures. Destiny focuses on Just Chatting content but has bene enjoying Diablo IV over on Kick since its release.
The last creator with over 2M Hours Watched on the platform is BruceDropEmOff. The streamer announced at the end of May that he was transitioning from Twitch to Kick, leaving behind 1.3M Twitch followers. His reception to Kick has been more than welcoming, quickly becoming one of the site's largest streamers.
Trainwreckstv followed closely behind with 1.97M Hours Watched. The streamer was an early adopter and backer of Kick, joining the platform early and spreading the word of the advantages of the platform, such as better revenue split than Twitch and less strict regulation. The streamer mainly streamed Slots & Casinos during the quarter, garnering 1.76M Hours Watched there alone. The streamer made the top rankings for the platform despite not streaming at all for the month of June, solidifying his popularity on the site.
Odablock is a primarily Old School RuneScape streamer, who reached 1.8M Hours Watched for Q2 of 2023. 1.58M of these stem from his RuneScape content, with other streams of Valorant, Minecraft, and Only Up! adding to this figure. Although only 7th on the rankings for Q2, odablock is the first streamer we’ve discussed on Kick so far that primarily streams video-game related content, instead of Just Chatting for example.
Lospollostv also made the cut, reaching 1.33M Hours Watched in Q2. The streamer originally started out on Twitch streaming various games but transitioned to Kick where he has found success. The streamer primarily focuses on Just Chatting and Slots & Casino content on the up-and-coming platform.
Rounding out our Kick rankings are dasgasd3m and heelmike, with 1.25M and 1.15M Hours Watched, respectively. The two streamers are also most well-known for their Just Chatting content, although dasgasd3m also streams GTA RP.
That wraps up our rankings of top US streamers during Q2, powered by HyperX. Although live streaming continues to become more and more international, whether with the Spanish-speaking community on Twitch or the Japanese community on YouTube Gaming, streamers from the US continue to be a large part of the websites and draw in millions of Hours Watched. Streams Charts will continue to analyse the data and metrics of Q2, keep an eye out for more articles.
