Streams Charts has once again compiled the list of most watched sponsored streams, this time for May, which was quite a busy time for the esports and streaming industries. Last month saw quite a few new entries in the Twitch and YouTube gaming rankings, including a heavy Polish presence in the former, after they were dominated by some familiar names over the first third of 2023.
Most watched sponsored Twitch streams in May 2023
In first place is buddha, the popular GTA V streamer who ran a sponsored stream alongside ExpressVPN that did 892K Hours Watched. It did 128.6% better than the second-placed entry on this list, and a big reason was that there were Twitch Drops available for viewers. The TSM content creator was the captain of Team Rocket during the Rust Rivals tournament, and the reward for audiences included an exclusive AK.
Next comes Maximum (390K HW), the MMO/variety streamer who is also Team Liquid's World of Warcraft guild leader and content creator, as he teamed up with u.gg to push its new desktop app. For the first time in almost three years, Team Liquid won the game’s Race to World First, with the North American champions conquering Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible, ahead of 19 other guilds worldwide by defeating the final boss Scalecommander Sarkareth in 114 pulls. The broadcaster also enabled drops on the broadcast, which helped it do a massive 91K Peak Viewers, almost as much as the other four entries combined.
Third is Xayoo_, who recorded 337K HW for a sponsored stream alongside LV BET, SteelSeries, Hero Wars, and Amazon Prime. It involved the Polish streamer interviewing countryman and colleague DanielMagical, with whom he won the Xayoo Cup, a PvP event he himself hosts.
Towelliee comes in fourth for his partnered stream with Origin PC — a custom personal computer manufacturing company — and Advanced.gg — a supplier of premium performance supplements to the gaming community — that registered 234K HW. Part of an 80hr+ WoW “Dropathon” that saw the Blazing Hippogryph Mount enabled as part of drops, it did some good numbers to push him into the top five.
Rounding off the top five is IzakOOO, with 231K HW for his partnered stream with the likes of Adidas, KFC, and Logitech. It involved a watch-along of the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 live, with matches involving the likes of OG, ENCE, and GamerLegion, making him the second of two Polish gaming creators to make this list.
Most watched sponsored YouTube Gaming streams in May 2023
Number one here is series regular Typical Gamer, who tied up with Gillette to preview the Miles Morales Spider-Man skin that hit the Fortnite Item Shop in May and accrued 39K HW. It was done during training for the $50K Gillette Cup and ahead of the much-anticipated release of the newest web-slinger movie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, on June 2. The Canadian has incredibly made this list for all five months of the year so far, including topping it four times, showing just how popular he is among fans of gaming and entertainment.
Next is VTuber IRyS Ch, who partnered with Capcom to promote Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection — released in April — and achieved 28K HW. The broadcast included the hololive talent playing the role-playing, adventure, and shooter video game for around six and a half hours.
On the last step of the podium is JFFLive, a YouTube entertainment and gaming handle that partnered with Collar, the musical band, to promote it and its members. The entire stream did 25K HW as the world saw more of the Hong Kong Cantopop girl group formed from a TV channel ViuTV's reality talent show, King Maker IV.
Fourth is Sykkuno with yet another Yu-Gi-Oh! Online broadcast, this time involving his good friend and fellow YouTube sensation Leslie as they battled it out in the Master Duel version of the popular digital collectible card game. It did 11K HW, and there were also glimpses of the American playing Fortnite on the stream after successfully sending his adversary to the Shadow Realm.
Last comes Nanashi Mumei Ch for her association with Ateam Entertainment Inc. that saw her play Valkyrie Connect, a Japanese RPG set in a world that's basically an anime version of Norse mythology. The hololive VTuber’s stream, which also saw colleague Ouro Kronii Ch come online, notched 8K HW.
In conclusion, YouTubers did much better in terms of getting more watch hours for their sponsored content last month than in April. It was the same for Twitch content creators, who massively improved their numbers from the previous month to continue a trend that began two months back.
