VTubers live streaming statistics for Q2 2023 — ironmouse surpasses Japanese creators in watch time

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VTubers are rapidly taking over the streaming sphere, some of the biggest streamers in the world are VTubers and they only continue to grow and excel every month after the last. We recently took a look at the most popular VTubers for the month of June, but today we look back at the entire second quarter of the year. Did ironmouse’s subathon give her enough fuel to overthrow the ginormous Japanese VTuber market? Come find out.

Most watched VTubers of Q2 2023

VTubers of all platforms sorted by Hours Watched

Ironmouse did indeed take the top spot away from Pekora for Q2. The Puerto Rican streamer was not only the most-watched VTuber of the quarter but was one of the most-watched American streamers for the entire quarter also. Ironmouse amassed 8.61M Hours Watched over the three months, but 6.84M of these came from June alone when her subathon was taking place. 

Pekora is relegated from her usual first to second place, but the YouTube Gaming streamer remained hugely popular and received 8.37M Hours Watched. Safely the largest VTuber in Japan, Pekora enjoyed an increase of 16.4% in terms of Hours Watched compared to Q1: an increase of over 1M hours. 

Kuzuha maintained his position as the most-subscribed-to and most-watched male VTuber. He gained 7.22M Hours Watched throughout Q2, and while his growth wasn’t as powerful as ironmouse’s or Pekora’s, he still saw an increase in viewership compared to Q1. 

The next four spots on the list all belong to hololive-affiliated streamers. Koyori, Miko, and Subaru all remain in the same order as they were in the Q1 data. All of them saw healthy growth in their viewership, but Miko stood out ahead of the rest and closed up the gap to Koyori. After being almost a million Hours Watched behind Koyori in Q1, Miko is building up momentum. 

Korone makes up the final entry in the four-woman train of hololive VTubers, but although last among the grouping she has seen a huge improvement since Q1. She ranked 10th on our list of Q1 viewership, garnering 2.83M hours of viewership. Now up in seventh place with 3.77M Hours Watched, she has experienced a growth of 33% in only three months.

Rounding out the list, 渋谷ハル (Shibuya HAL) and AdmiralBahroo are the final two men on the list. Shibuya remains 8th, the same spot he achieved in Q1, but saw an increase in viewership, achieving 3.58M Hours Watched in Q2. AdmiralBahroo marks the second English-speaking VTuber on the list and makes his first appearance to the top rankings for this year. The panda could only manage 14th on the rankings for Q1 and jumped from the fourth-most-watched VTuber on Twitch to become the second-most-watched.

Finally, Watame took the final spot on the ranking with 3.1M Hours Watched. The hololive-affiliated VTuber drops from 6th place in our Q1 rankings, with 3.52M Hours Watched. However, the streamer’s Airtime was significantly reduced for Q2 and her average viewership remained consistent despite this. If she can increase her Airtime for Q3, she can easily fly back up the list.

Most popular VTubers of Q2 2023

Most Popular VTubers according to Peak Viewers

Pekora reclaims her top spot when the attention is turned to Peak Viewers. She achieved 242K concurrent viewers this quarter while streaming hololive’s first Puyo Puyo Tetris tournament: a large-scale collaboration of hololive VTubers. Almost 80K separated Pekora from the second-most-popular VTuber. Second place belonged to Shibuya, the Neo-Porte VTuber reached 165K Peak Viewers while streaming and commentating for the VTuber Most Cooperative Tournament #5: an all-VTuber brawl in Apex Legends. 

In third place was 一ノ瀬うるは, Ichinose Uruha, a member of the Virtual eSports Project: a VTuber agency focusing on esports. She reached her peak concurrent viewers of 135K whilst revealing her new 3D model. Following behind in fifth place was Aizawa Ema, who reached a peak of 114K also debuting her new 3D model. 

Tied in fifth place with Aizawa is Gold Ship, known for her channel ぱかチューブっ (Pakatube). Gold Ship is an interesting VTuber, as she is originally a character from Uma Musume Pretty Derby, a series of mobile games and anime. Combining the audience of anime directly with VTubing, she also reached 114K Peak Viewers.

Making up the bottom three are three faces we haven’t discussed yet. Watarai Hibari in eighth and Hanabusa Lisa in tenth both reached their respective peak viewership on the 12th of May, as they both revealed their new 3D models. In the middle of these two, Kanata of hololive achieved 103K Peak Viewers during her birthday celebration stream.

Platform popularity by Hours Watched

Unsurprisingly, Twitch and YouTube make up for nearly all of VTuber viewership traffic, with less than 0.1% of Hours Watched coming from other platforms. YouTube maintains its position as the go-to site for VTubers, especially the Japanese, however, it only made up 68.1% of all total Hours Watched. This represents an 8% drop in YouTube’s share of Hours Watched since Q1 of this year. 

Twitch as a result increased to 31.8% of total hours, representing a shift in interest towards the platform. Even when ironmouse’s spike in viewership in June is accounted for, there is still a statistically relevant boost to Twitch’s share of the Hours Watched. Historically, Japanese is the go-to platform for Japanese-speaking VTubers and Twitch for other languages, this shift in platform distribution may be connected to the country distribution of VTubers. 

Gender & Country distribution 

VTubing remains a field in the industry dominated by females. Stream Charts analysed the data of 3000+ VTubing channels to represent the field as accurately as possible, and 21.9% of these channels identified as male, and 78.1% as female. Although males remain a minority in VTubing, there was a slight increase in the number of men participating in the streaming activity. In Q1 of 2023, Streams Charts recorded a make-up of 18.8% males and 81.2% females.

Turning the focus to the countries of VTubers, we may start to see why Twitch is rising and YouTube is slowly declining. In Q1 2023 Japanese VTubers were the majority of far, 72.9% of all VTubers hailing from Japan. As of 2023, this figure has dropped to 71.8%; although still a majority, the data shows a growth in international VTubing. The United States now makes up 10.9% of all VTubers and Thailand 5.9%. 

VTuber agencies' popularity by Hours Watched

As of Q2 2023, hololive has not only retained its spot as the most-watched agency but even widened the gap to second place. Hololive recorded a 26.7% share of total Hours Watched for VTubers during the quarter, and NIJISANJI followed close behind - not as close as Q1 - with 23.2%.

Although hololive is the most-watched agency, they did not make up the majority of our data. Independent VTubers have become much more popular, receiving a portion of 27.1% of all Hours Watched for the quarter. Compare this to Q1 of this year, when independent VTubers made up 21.7% of total Hours Watched. With a rise in independent VTubers, Twitch viewership, and VTubing outside of Japan, it seems that independent VTubers from around the world are flocking to Twitch to start creating content. 

Virtual eSports Project, otherwise known as VSPO!, had a hugely successful quarter, experiencing a 70% increase from Q1 2023. The esports agency clocked in at 6.8% of total Hours Watched. VShojo also saw an increase of 1.3%, helped along by ironmouse’s astronomical viewership in June. 

VTubing is one of the fastest-growing subindustries in the live-streaming sphere to date. It remains one of the most popular choices for streamers in Japan and its influence globally is only continuing to spread. In terms of Hours Watched, the entirety of the top ten ranked steamers of Q2 saw an increase in viewership compared to Q1 of this year. Japan is the nexus of this phenomenon, however, the data suggests that viewership may be rising internationally. For now, Japan remains a market majority for VTubing, but as the virtual avatars gain traction internationally it may become the quintessential style of streaming.