As we enter the year's final quarter, it's time to look at the viewership and most-watched channels of September for YouTube Gaming. YouTube Gaming is quickly emerging as one of the top live-streaming platforms for gaming in the Western World, and the red platform is even more popular than Twitch in some regions.
For the month of September, YouTube saw over 379K channels go live and reached a new Peak Channels record for the year, with over 15.6K channels broadcasting live simultaneously. Throughout September, YouTube Live content received 3.19B hours of watch time, slightly more than August but statistically insignificant. Last month, 13% of YouTube’s watch time for live broadcasts was due to YouTube Gaming, a slight drop from the 15% YouTube Gaming contributed to the total watch time in August.
On average throughout the entire month, over 4M viewers were watching YouTube Live content at any given moment, marking a slight uptick of 4% in this metric. Let’s look at who were the most-watched broadcasters for this period and who contributed the most to YouTube Gaming.
Most-watched and most popular YouTube Gaming streamers in September 2023
YouTube Gaming is a diverse and eclectic platform of creators from regions around the globe offering all different kinds of entertainment with their broadcasts. The most-watched streamer of September 2023 was DjMaRiiO, a Spanish streamer with over 9M subscribers. Although generally popular among his fan base, DjMaRiiO had an extra special September of this year with his advance copy of EA Sports FC 24. The Spanish streamer spent most of September broadcasting advance content for the title which was scheduled to release on September 29th.
Behind the Spaniard was NOBRU, a Portuguese content creator who spent the month covering his own gameplay of Garena Free Fire. A free-to-play Battle Royale title developed by Garena, the game is becoming hugely popular in Brazil and other regions around the world, and NOBRU was by far the most-watched streamer of the game during September.
Third on the rankings was IShowSpeed, the first English-speaking content creator to appear on our rankings this month. Speed’s content was less monolithic than the previous two broadcasters, as he focused on a wide variety of content for the month. He started off with IRL streams in the UK and collaborations with other popular creators like KSI, and he steadily amassed watch time throughout the month with his many broadcasts. While in London, Speed recorded the fourth episode of The Kai ‘N Speed Show with popular creator Kai Cenat. The two broadcast their show to Rumble, where they receive millions of views for their live show.
In fourth and sixth place, respectively, were Pekora and Koyori, two VTubers from Japan. Japan is one of the biggest markets for YouTube Gaming and the red platform is dominated by VTubers from this region. VTubers amass large amounts of watch time during their daily regular broadcasts and this was enough to earn two well-respected VTubers a spot on this ranking.
In between these two VTubers in our rankings was LoLzZz Gaming. LoLzZz is the sole Indian streamer to make our rankings this month and he spent September covering Battlegrounds Mobile India, an official Indian-exclusive version of PUBG Mobile. Mobile gaming is breaking out in regions all over the world, in Indonesia, India, Brazil, and more, and LoLzZz is not only representative of this quickly growing audience but also of the Indian live-streaming industry, which often receives less attention than other Asian countries in the live-streaming sphere.
Speaking of which, LoLzZz was followed by two Indonesian streamers, Windah Basudara and Jonathon Liandi. Basudara is a variety streamer who focused the majority of his time in September on Ark: Survival Evolved. Liadni on the other hand operates as a community caster and broadcaster for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, a hugely popular esports title in Indonesia.
These two were followed by 노돌리, a Korean streamer who experienced a particularly strong month thanks to a strong Lost Ark broadcast, for which he not only received hundreds of thousands of Hours Watched but also set a personal Peak Viewers record. The Korean streamer was followed by DrDisrespect, the two-time champion being the second English-speaking broadcaster to make the list. DrDisespect streamed a variety of games, including Starfield, Valorant, and the new Mortal Kombat 1 title.
Liandi was the most popular streamer of the month with 138K PV recorded during Week 8 of the MPL Indonesia, a popular Mobile Legends: Bang Bang professional league that is one of the most popular esports leagues in the world. Rusli ID was another Indonesian broadcaster to reach the top of the platform for the month, but he achieved this through traditional sports instead of esports. Rusli broadcasted a football match of the AFC U23 football cup, which received over one hundred thousand concurrent viewers at peak.
JOHNATHAN GAMING is a popular Indian content creator who reached his peak viewers for the month during a special birthday broadcast for his fans. Behind him was DjMaRiiO, who we already covered achieved great popularity in September thanks to his early access to EA Sports FC 24. Indeed, one stream of this at the time unreleased title was enough to bank him a spot as one of the most popular streamers of the month.
This ranked just ahead of Subaru, a popular VTuber from Japan. Subaru is hugely popular and regularly receives tens of thousands of current viewers for her streams, but early in the month she hosted a special Minecraft broadcast which went down especially favourably with fans. Subaru was the most popular VTuber of September, but she wasn’t the only one to rank within this top 10.
LiamVidal was the first Spanish streamer on this list, who reached a Peak Viewers figure of over 100K thanks to a Tesla product update stream. As the VOD of this broadcast has been removed by the broadcaster, it’s unclear if this was a legitimate stream covering some new updates that Tesla is bringing, or a clickbait title meant to grab viewers and inflate statistics.
Heading to the tail end of our rankings, MixiGaming is a Vietnamese streamer who regularly receives a high amount of viewers for his broadcasts, yet mostly on another platform, NimoTV. Despite peaking at just over 100K concurrent viewers during September, many of his streams were close to besting this record and his Average Viewers for the month of September is over 70K.
Mixi was followed by Pekora, the second VTuber in our rankings. She achieved her Peak Viewers rating through a collaborative VTuber event hosted on her channel. The event was short and sweet, lasting only an hour, but Pekora managed to garner enough viewership within this short window of time to rank among the top 10 most popular streamers of the month.
BrandonKent Everything is a popular Indonesian streamer who focuses on ML:BB content. He reached such a high Peak Viewers figure during the month through his community casting of the ever-popular MPL Indoensia league. The event is not only one of the most-watched and most popular leagues in esports, but the league also supplies community casters and content creators with opportunities to boost their own watch time by casting matches.
Finishing off our rankings of the most popular creators on YouTube Gaming for the month, was IShowSpeed. The American content creator reached 82.5K Peak Viewers during his early access stream of the new FIFA 24 title. Although this September peak was enough to rank Speed within the top 10, he has the potential to reach much higher viewership. Towards the end of August, Speed reached 173K concurrent viewers during a celebratory stream of reaching 20M subscribers on YouTube.
Most-watched and most popular Organisation broadcasters on YouTube Gaming
Top YouTube Gaming Organisations of September 2023, by watch time and peak viewers
By filtering our results to only include channels marked as Organisations in our database, the domination of esports on YouTube Gaming is clear. The most-watched channel of September was the official MPL Indonesia broadcast, which received over 7.6M hours of watch time during the month. Second was Liên Quân Mobile eSports-Garena, the official YouTube Gaming channel for Arena of Valor, an international version of a mobile game developed for mainland China.
The rest of the list is mainly dominated by mobile gaming, featuring countries like Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia all covering various esports events for mobile gaming titles in their respective regions. Two channels stand out from these, the official Overwatch League broadcast and the ESL Counter-Strike broadcast. Overwatch League is decently popular, but the series saw a 100% boost in watch time for September and this was barely enough to compete with established mobile gaming broadcasters.
ESL Counter-Strike received solid viewership thanks to the ESL Pro League Season 18. The Playoffs stage of the event was interrupted by the release of Counter-Strike 2 as the event organisers scrambled to keep their CS:GO event on schedule. The event was unofficially dubbed the “last ever CS:GO event” by fans, but despite this, it was only the seventh-most-watched ESL Pro League event.
In terms of Peak Viewers, Nintendo’s official Japanese and English-speaking accounts were the most popular broadcasts of the month. The Japanese games company hosted their Nintendo Direct presentation, where information about upcoming titles or company developments is presented to their fans. This outshone the official PlayStation YouTube account, which hosted a similar “State of Play” presentation.
Brawl Stars also hosted a presentation stream on upcoming happenings for the game, and Monster Strike hosted a 10-year anniversary for their game on the モンスト（モンスターストライク）公式 YouTube Gaming channel. The rest of the top 10 was mainly filled out by mobile gaming esports channels, such as MPL Indonesia and ML:BB Indonesia, but the YouTube Gaming Genshin Impact channel went live to announce some changes with the Ver.4.1 update, and the CBLOL managed to finish out the final spot. CBLOL is the official Brazillian League of Legends pro league and the organisation reached 183.4K Peak Viewers thanks to the Grand Final of Split 2 between LOUD and paiN Gaming.
With the top streamers of September behind us, Q3 is open for all streamers to try and become one of the top broadcasters for the final three months of the year. YouTube Gaming is an especially international broadcasting platform that features top creators from Japan, India, Latin America, and countless other regions. The platform is always evolving, so keep up to date on the latest trends and happenings in live-streaming with Streams Charts large database of all things live-streaming.
