The recently concluded 2024 ASEAN Championship final not only helped YouTube set a new record for the most viewers on the platform, but it also made a big impact on the rankings of the most popular sports channels in livestreaming. Fans of Casimiro “CazéTV” Miguel can relax though — the Brazilian streamer’s channel still holds on to its top spot.
The 2024 ASEAN Championship football tournament made a huge splash, becoming the most-watched sports event ever covered in livestreaming. Its broadcasts peaked at 10,743,416 viewers, all tuning in live on YouTube through Vietnamese and Thai channels. The peak viewership for the 2024 ASEAN Championship was twice as high as La Velada del Año IV, a boxing event hosted by popular Spanish streamer Ibai ‘’ibai’’ Llanos. What's more, the 2024 ASEAN Championship streams generated more watch hours than all La Velada del Año events combined, showcasing the massive scale of this football event.
The 2024 ASEAN Championship matches were covered by just a few YouTube channels. The most popular of them was the Vietnamese channel FPT Bóng Đá Việt, which peaked at 4,893,909 viewers. While this is an impressive figure, it’s still not a record — back in December 2022, Brazilian streamer CazéTV hit a peak of 6,147,242 viewers during the match between Brazil and Croatia at the World Cup in Qatar. As a result, FPT Bóng Đá Việt became the second most-popular sports channel in terms of viewers.
Two other channels also attracted huge audiences while covering the 2024 ASEAN Championship — Vietnam's BÓNG ĐÁ VIỆT NAM and Thailand’s BG SPORTS. Each peaked with over 2,000,000 viewers, landing them in the top-6 most popular sports channels in livestreaming history. For both channels, these were the best results they've ever achieved.
Today, most popular sports channels have set record-breaking viewership thanks to broadcasts of football matches or boxing events (often featuring celebrities). Interestingly, the top channels are mostly from Southeast Asia and Brazil, with no English-language channels making the cut. This is because major sports events usually don’t have free English-language broadcasts — broadcast rights for English commentary are sold to paid streaming services like DAZN. For local language broadcasts and smaller regional events, the situation is different, and organizers allow livestreaming to attract more viewers.
You can read more about the 2024 ASEAN Championship results in our article about YouTube Live’s new viewership record.
