Through the Summer of 2024, the world caught football fever. Two major international footballing events took place across both the Americas and Europe to decide which countries reigned as the continental footballing champions. Both the UEFA Euro 2024 and the Copa América 2024 received massive media attention, and the livestreaming industry was abuzz for the two events.
Throughout both footballing events, thousands and thousands of channels streamed matches, covered the event, and provided entertainment for fans. The Euro 2024 was covered by slightly more channels than the Copa América, but both were intensively covered across global livestreaming platforms. One platform in particular stood out for both events: YouTube Live.
Livestreamed coverage is one way to follow the Euro and Copa América, but definitely not the most mainstream option. Many broadcasts on livestreaming platforms are region-locked YouTube-hosted broadcasts, or reaction streams, where viewers watch the match on their own, and then also watch a streamer's reaction broadcast. YouTube Live was by far the most popular livestreaming option for both the Euro 2024 and Copa América 2024.
For the football events, YouTube Live generated more than 90% of their total watch time, and in the Euro’s case this was as high as 91.7%. The two events did differ slightly aside from this YouTube domination; aside from YouTube, Twitch was the most popular option for Euro fans, but for the Copa América the remainder of the viewership was mostly shared by Kick and Twitch together.
Kick has made major moves to secure a place in the American livestreaming platform. Not only have they directly secured contracts with some of North America’s most popular livestreaming personalities, they have been making significant signings in South America too. Many of South America’s most popular content creators reside on Kick, and the LATAM community is strong. Kick was even 0.7% more watched than Twitch when it came to viewership of the 2024 Copa América, highlighting Kick’s success in this market.
In total, the UEFA Euro 2024 received 83.9M Hours Watched of coverage across all platforms. This was significantly more than the Copa América, which received 25.9M Hours Watched. The Euro was distinctly both more-watched and more popular than the Copa América in 2024.
Although the Euro 2024 achieved a much higher peak viewership and accumulated much more watch time than the 2024 Copa América, the average viewership was much closer. The Copa América received only 24K fewer Average Viewers than the European event.
Interestingly, the Peak Viewers of 4.34M for the Euro 2024 was achieved by a Latin American livestreamer. CazéTV is a Brazilian sports journalist, commentator, and livestreaming personality. The Brazilian was covering parts of the Euro 2024, and he reached millions of Brazilian viewers during Portugal’s game against France. Cazé is often at the front of the sports livestreaming industry, and he emerged as the most popular broadcaster of the summer.
Cazé also broadcasted the Euro's final between Spain and England, but his coverage only reached 2M PV. Cazé's large Portuguese-speaking audience was more invested in Portugal's match against France, rather than the event's final match.
While the Euro’s most popular match was not its final, the same was not true for the Copa América. Argentina’s 1-0 victory against Colombia in the final of the 2024 Copa América was the most popular moment of the event, reaching 345.9K Peak Viewers on ge, the channel of Globo Esporte, a Brazilian sports news portal.
In terms of the most popular channels to broadcast the evnet, CazéTV stood out far ahead of the rest as the Summer's most popular football broadcaster. The Brazilian reached 53.8M Hours Watched on his main YouTube Live channel, as well as earning 1.2M Hours Watched with his Twitch broadcasts. Aside from Cazé, the most-watched Euros coverage were the ESPN Fans YouTube channel, Spanish Twitch partner DiarioMARCA, and English-language YouTube channel That's Football.
On the Copa América side, Vietnamese-language broadcasts were particularly popular. Vietnamese sports organization NEXT SPORTS was the most-watched with 2.45M HW, and BLV Tạ Biên Cương took fifth-place with 631.1K Hours Watched. The Peak Viewers metrics for these Vietnamese channels were also markedly higher than the other Copa América channels here.
Spanish-speaking 十Loork Football took second with 1.18M Hours Watched, followed by Argentinan organization TyC Sports. Finally, Argentinan Kick streamer lacobraaa was his platform's most-watched creator to cover the Copa América, having received 710K Hours Watched in total.
Honing in our view to Twitch specifically, we collated Twitch Chat statistics throughout both footballing events. Here, we have a comparison of which countries were mentioned the most across global Twitch Chats. This data includes English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Turkish messages, for securing a representation of the global football community.
Spain, the ultimate champions of the Euro 2024, were the most popular country among those attending the Euro 2024. Spain was mentioned 627.6K times, markedly more than France, who were mentioned 522.1K times. Interestingly, finalists England were not even able to rank in the podium places here. Despite the success of the team up until the final, England was overshadowed by France and Germany, who were eliminated earlier.
Across the pond for the Copa América, the United States was by far the most popular country. They were mentioned 837.7K times, a testament to the cultural power of the state. Brazil was in second place, but they were mentioned hundreds of thousands of times fewer than the United States. Canada finished in third place with 310.6K mentions, surpassing even champions Argentina.
The Copa América is extremely popular in Latin America, but these LATAM audiences are more likely to be present on other platforms rather than Twitch. Twitch statistics can usually lean towards a North American and European bias, which is likely why Argentina and finalists Colombia are so underrepresented by this data.
Specific players, rather than entire countries, are an interesting point of comparison for these statistics. Taking another trophy home, Messi solidified his legacy as a footballing great, and he also managed this by being more popular in Twitch Chat than rival Ronaldo. Messi was mentioned by Twitch Chats 301.7K times, being one of the very rare examples of a Copa América player recording higher mentions than Euro players.
Moving downwards in age, regional stars James Roriguez and Rodri competed on the world stage through the Summer and impressed many. Despite Rodriguez’s good efforts, Rodri was massively more popular, recording 46.5K mentions. The Manchester City midfielder was multitudes more popular than the Copa América player, which is more in line with the rest of the data, which was collected from Twitch’s largely European audience for football.
Finally, young stars Endrick and Yamal were both highly mentioned, but Yamal was a cut above with 78.7K recorded mentions. Although the gap between the two’s mentions is sizeable, both players were one of their region’s top 5 most-mentioned players. This natural drift towards European bias on Twitch makes Messi’s dominance only more impressive.
