The election for “Streamer of the Year 2024” took place in Saudi Arabia. The big streamers on Twitch and YouTube were all nominated: xQc, KaiCenat, Clix, the Spaniard Ibai, or newcomer Jynxzi. But the only woman in the field won: Samantha Rivera Treviño, known as Rivers.
What kind of election is this? It was the Esports Awards in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The award ceremony marked the conclusion of the controversial Esports World Cup. It is viewed critically because everything Saudi Arabia does is viewed critically.
Rivers was nominated for the award alongside:
- Jynxzi – the big newcomer on Twitch
- Kai Cenat – the most successful streamer on Twitch 2024
- Clix – the leading, still very young Fortnite streamer
- Ibai – the leading European streamer, a big name in Spain with events
- IShowSpeed – a star on YouTube who is currently popular among young people
- CaseOh – a gaming streamer on YouTube
- xQc – who dominated Twitch after the departure of shroud and Ninja and earned a lot of money with Kick
- Caedrel – the leading analyst for League of Legends
- Coringa – a Brazilian streamer
- Gaules – a huge Brazilian streamer for CS:GO
Saudi Arabia is investing a lot of money in the gaming industry. You can read more about it from our colleagues at GameStar+, who break down the situation in a large background report.
He has a problem with the outcome of the award, Asmongold, representative of all that is good and right:
Mexican Woman Wins for the 2nd Year in a Row
Who won? The award was won by the only woman in the field: the 26-year-old Mexican Samy Rivers aka Rivers. She has about 6.3 million followers on the Twitch channel rivers_gg and an average of 16,240 viewers.
Since she streams in Spanish, she is naturally not as well-known in the predominantly US-centric Twitch scene. Last year, she primarily streamed Minecraft, Warzone, and Rust. The majority of her content was, however, in non-gaming categories such as “Just Chatting”, “Sports”, and “IRL”.
Rivers had already won the award in 2023.
How did she win? The award was determined through pure viewer voting.
Asmongold Says: “Just Because She’s a Woman”
Who has a problem with it? Of course, Asmongold. The Twitch streamer rants: The election is bullshit. It’s purely a diversity pick. Rivers only won because “she’s a woman”.
Actually, IShowSpeed or KaiCenat should have won. Or someone else, maybe CaseOh or Ibai. Everyone knows that. Anyone else should have won:
They only nominated her because she is a woman. It’s embarrassing. She’s not even one of the best female streamers. Not even close. Everyone knows that. It’s bullshit.
“Are You Accusing the Saudis of Being Woke?!”
What do others think: One of those who has fun with Asmongold’s take is the streamer Squeex. He finds Asmongold’s statement hilariously funny:
Do you know what you are accidentally saying here? You imply that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia manipulated the outcome of the election for reasons of diversity. That’s just hilarious. You’re accusing a Saudi company of caring about diversity. That’s just the funniest take from the West.
How does it look from a German perspective? From a German perspective, one has to chuckle a bit, as the debate is very similar to the discussion we had in Germany, when Shurjoka was named Streamer of the Year 2023.
What’s behind this: In such “community elections”, it ultimately comes down to which streamer can motivate their community the most to vote for them.
It is important how much the respective person wants to win and how much time they invest in encouraging their community to vote for them and how much self-promotion they do.
One can speculate that the many US streamers canceled each other’s votes and that favorites like Ibai or Kai Cenat simply didn’t find it important enough to motivate their fans to vote for them.
Asmongold’s relationship with women seems to be somewhat tense overall lately. But there might be a solution for him to peacefully settle the issue: Twitch streamer Asmongold has seen the future – believes that AI girlfriends will be a “trillion-dollar business”
