In the first half of 2022, the Ukrainian-speaking audience of Twitch and Trovo streaming services became much more active, increasing not only the number of unique broadcasts but also the number of viewers. The Streams Charts team overviews the interim results for the last six months and explains how this leap in statistics was affected by the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Twitch has always been considered the main platform for streamers from the CIS and Ukraine, but in 2022 the popularity of the Trovo service has also shown rapid growth (which was largely because of a more flexible monetization system). In the first six months of 2022, Ukrainian-language streams on Twitch generated more than 3.2M Hours Watched, while Trovo generated 649K Hours Watched. If we compare January and June, such indicators of the Ukrainian-language segment of Twitch as Hours Watched, unique channels, and Average Viewers have shown fourfold growth, while the Peak Viewers indicator has shown tenfold growth. On Trovo, the growth shown was even greater — on the other hand, the platform’s indicators were an order of magnitude lower.
Both platforms also set Peak Viewers records during Ukrainian broadcasts. For example, the Ukrainian-language stream of BLAST Premier Spring 2022 Finals from the WePlay studio was watched by 30.4K Peak Viewers during the tournament’s final. Before the war, the record for Ukrainian-language broadcasts was 17.7K Peak Viewers. In the case of Trovo, the Peak Viewers record was more than doubled, from 2.5K to 6K Peak Viewers. The updated mark was reached on May 28 during the broadcast of the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool.
There were several reasons for this rapid growth: many content creators from Ukraine, who used to stream in Russian, started to broadcast in Ukrainian (either partially or fully) after the start of the war. For many streamers, this decision has become a matter of principle. Among them are Olsior, Yozhyk (he streamed in Ukrainian even before the war), v1lat, petr1k, bafik, Twaryna, and others.
Ukrainian language on Twitch
Back in 2016, a petition was launched on Twitch with a request to add Ukrainian language on the platform, and users began to vote for it even more actively this spring: at the moment, over 13,000 people signed the petition. However, the situation has not changed yet: there is still no official localization.
After the start of active hostilities in Ukrainian society, there was a great demand for Ukrainian-language content. This helped the growth of channels that were broadcasting in Ukrainian even before the war.
Finally, it is impossible to avoid mentioning the emergence of new channels. Because of the war, many people lost their jobs, and some of them decided to try their hand at streaming/content creation to be able to earn at least some income. Such channels often discussed politics and warfare, held charity fundraisers, and so on.
Who else is streaming in Ukrainian, aside from large studios and creators?
During the war, volunteers and the military started using Twitch for fundraisers. Moreover, this was often done by those having no prior live streaming experience. One of the girls decided to hold a Twitch stream during which she read fairy tales for donations to raise money for the children's hospital. Another girl gave a live lecture on emergency medical care in combat conditions to raise funds for the purchase of tourniquets. It was not uncommon to stumble on entertaining streams featuring funny stories told by the military from the frontlines.
The daily number of active Ukrainian-language channels shows an interesting trend. Until February 2022, the number of these channels showed rather slow growth, and between the end of February and the beginning of March, there were fewer channels than usual (as many streamers could not broadcast, as they had to evacuate away from the warfare). This has primarily affected such large cities as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, etc. For comparison, on March 1, only 119 Ukrainian-language channels broadcasted on Twitch, which was the lowest level of activity since the beginning of the year. On June 23, there were 733 active channels — which was the best result in six months.
When analyzing by categories, Ukrainian-language streams on Twitch generated the most Hours Watched thanks to such esports titles as CS:GO (27.2%) and Dota 2 (14.7%), as well as the casual category Just Chatting (6.7%). The Ukrainian-language channels on Trovo were mostly streaming World of Tanks (30.6%), PUBG Mobile (12.8%), and PUBG: Battlegrounds (8.6%).
The most popular Ukrainian-language channels on Twitch in the first half of 2022 were the official channels from the WePlay and Maincast studios — as both studios tried to organize Ukrainian-language broadcasts for all the events they covered.
How is the growth of Ukrainian-language streaming statistics affected by esports?
In addition to the major studios WePlay Esports and Maincast, the growth of the language segment was also helped by esports teams. For example, in mid-July, a show match was held with the participation of the NAVI OLD and NAVI 2022 Dota 2 rosters. At that time, the organizers organized a charity fundraiser for the Zaporizhzhya Children's Hospital during the Ukrainian-language broadcast.
When taking into account only the standalone steamers (but not the clubs and organizations) then the largest Ukrainian-speaking audience was gathered by Olsior. This was largely due to his regular conversational streams about politics and the military situation in the country.
Before the war, the Ukrainian-speaking streaming and esports community was eclipsed by the Russian-speaking community and was pretty much inseparable from it. After the outbreak of hostilities, a certain schism occurred between the communities, and now this division is gradually increasing. Ukrainian content creators and their viewers began to identify themselves as Ukrainians more often, which led to the growth of the language segment.
