With esports taking a backseat during the first month of the new year, it was a chance for renowned streamers to once again fight for the top spot on the YouTube Gaming ratings. This also meant we got to see quite a few VTubers in the top ten, maintaining their recent good run and no doubt pleasing millions of fans globally.
As mentioned, it might not have been the busiest month for competitive gaming, but we still have a couple of esports channels making this leaderboard. They included events for prominent games like League of Legends and Counter-Strike 2 as the new season slowly gets heated up across esports titles.
Top YouTube Gaming Channels in January 2025
Darren "IShowSpeed" Watkins Jr was the top name last month among YouTube Gaming channels, hitting almost 7.6 million Hours Watched (HW). His tour of 11 South American countries in two weeks, which kicked off at the start of 2025, was the main attraction for his fans last month. It saw the massively popular American visit tons of landmarks, celebrate his 20th birthday, get a personal shout-out from his idol Cristiano Ronaldo, and hit 35,000,000 subscribers on the red platform.
January 2025 also saw a new entry on these monthly YouTube rankings, with Schevenko "RRQ Skylar" Tendean finishing all the way up in the second spot. The RRQ Hoshi professional gamer spent a lot of time this off-season playing Mobile Legends: Bang Bang as he attempted to rank push in this renowned mobile MOBA title.
A prominent name who once again made these standings was Timothy "TimTheTatman" Betar, another influencer who seemed to enjoy Marvel Rivals a lot. He was joined by a trio of VTubers — Pekora Ch., Kuzuha, Miko Ch. — who spent most of the first month of the new year playing titles like Path of Exile 2, Street Fighter 6 Collectors Edition, and Fast Food Simulator.
A few games did see their esports seasons kick off in earnest in January 2025, meaning competitive gaming broadcasts from channels like BLAST Premier, Alexandre "Gaules" Borba, and LCK made the table. Last but not least was India's Yash "LoLzZz Gaming" Thacker, another constant presence on these ratings and someone who genuinely has claims to the label Battlegrounds Mobile India's biggest creator from the country.
Joining the eight already-mentioned names on the list of most-watched YouTube Gaming streamers are Korone Ch. and Brando "Windah Basudara" Windah. The VTuber favoured Paper Mario: Die Legende vom Äonentor a lot last month, while Indonesian superstar Windah spent a lot of his time livestreaming playthroughs of Streamer Life Simulator 2, an indie simulation that came out in its early access on January 23.
Top Esports Channels in January 2025
The top esports broadcasters by watch time for the first month of this year came from the top games in terms of the viewership from the competitive side of gaming. In addition to the official LCK channel, League of Legends had two more representatives in the form of LCK Tiếng Việt and LCK Global, the official Vietnamese and English channels of the game's competitive endeavours.
Sticking with the MOBA genre, the official MPL Indonesia channel placed eighth to give Mobile Legends: Bang Bang it's only entry on the list. The account covered the Snapdragon Pro Series Season 6 APAC - Challenge Season, part of one of the game's biggest annual third-party series.
There is also a Dota 2 representative in the form of ESL Dota 2, which was busy livestreaming matches from various tournaments. This included the regional qualifiers for the ESL One Raleigh 2025 and the DreamLeague Season 25, both part of Season 3 of the ESL Pro Tour.
The rest of the entries come from shooter games, led by two Valorant channels: VALORANT // JAPAN and VALORANT Champions Tour EMEA, which broadcast games from the regional VCT Kickoff events and the VALORANT Challengers 2025 Japan: Split 1. The official Call of Duty League channel ended in fifth place thanks to the first Major of the year, which marked a successful return to Europe for the CDL.
