Twitch seems to have picked up most of Mixer’s streamers

Streamers seem to have flocked to Twitch from Mixer after the Microsoft-owned live-streaming service announced plans to shut down in June. A new report shows that Twitch’s share of hours broadcast on major live-streaming platforms jumped up by over 14 percentage points this quarter, taking away the nearly identical just over 14 percent market share that Mixer previously held.

With Mixer out of the picture, Twitch ended up with 91.1 percent of all hours spent streaming on these platforms between July and September, according to a new report from Streamlabs & Stream Hatchet that looked at streaming activity on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming. Facebook Gaming grew slightly during that time period, to 3.4 percent from 2.4 percent, and YouTube shrunk slightly, to 5.5 percent from 6.7 percent.

That Twitch won out is particularly notable because Facebook made a serious effort to pick up Mixer’s streamers. It partnered with Mixer to help streamers get set up on the new platform, and Mixer started advertising Facebook Gaming during its final month online. Mixer’s website still forwards to Facebook Gaming today. Evidently, that wasn’t enough to convince Mixer streamers to pick yet another underdog in the streaming space.

“Hours streamed” is a useful metric for determining where streamers are spending their time, but it’s not necessarily the metric that matters. These platforms are primarily competing for viewership, and in that area, Twitch actually lost some ground. The report now puts Twitch at 63.6 percent market share, down from 67.6 percent. That should be particularly concerning because both YouTube and Facebook Gaming grew this quarter; Mixer made up only 1.4 percent of hours streamed, so these services are growing at a faster pace than Twitch.

Streaming viewership has exploded this year, thanks in part to people being stuck inside and looking for new things to watch. The report estimates that total viewership across all three services was 7.46 billion hours last quarter, up from 3.89 billion the year before.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/7/21506668/twitch-mixer-streamers-facebook-gaming-hours-streamed