According to a new report, Amazon’s streaming service Twitch leads far ahead of the competitor Mixer, which is backed by Microsoft, in the last 3 months. Even the signing of Fortnite star Tyler “Ninja” Blevins couldn’t shake this. On the contrary: Twitch further expanded its dominance in the 3rd quarter of 2019.
Where do these numbers come from? They come from 2 services: Stream-Elements and Arsenal.gg.
They analyzed their data to see how the relationship between Twitch, YouTube, Facebook Gaming, and Mixer has changed.
The measure they use to gauge success is “watched hours.”
This refers to the 3rd quarter of 2019, the period from July to September. Already the dominance of the color purple in the pie chart shows: Twitch continues to dominate. With over 75%.
The light blue of Mixer only takes a small piece of the pie. Of the 3.2%, no one will get full.
How did it look in the previous quarter? In the Q2 2019 (via stream-elements) the market shares looked like this:
- Twitch was at 72.2% of the market shares. Thus, they achieved an increase of 3.4% in Q3.
- Mixer gained 3% from April to June – so now they have a plus of 0.2%.
- YouTube was at 19.5% – they lost 1.9%.
- Facebook Gaming had 5.3% in Q2 – they lost 1.6%.
Twitch was able to gain 3.4% – but Mixer only 0.2%. This means that Twitch’s lead has widened further. Although Mixer had Tyler “Ninja” Blevins exclusively for the last 2 months.
This was the turning point: On August 1st, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins announced that he would exclusively stream on Mixer. At that time, Blevins was the streamer on Twitch with the most followers. The enormous growth of his channel ran parallel to the success of the online shooter Fortnite.
The reasons for the switch are officially not known. However, it is believed that Microsoft offered the Twitch streamer a nice package of money and other benefits:
- Just from “free subscriptions,” there was a substantial money boost for Ninja since he started streaming on Mixer.
- Additionally, he can now play Microsoft titles like Gears 5 before all other streamers – Ninja himself cites this as an important reason for his switch.
- It is likely planned that Ninja will become a brand ambassador for Mixer and Microsoft in gaming – at least he presents himself this way. When the band Blink182 shouted “Fuck Mixer” at TwitchCon, Ninja took it personally.
When he made the switch, it was believed that he did not feel valued enough by Twitch – with Mixer, he is clearly the sole and also the only star.
There is no Ninja effect and a weak September
How did the switch affect the numbers for Mixer? The numbers for Mixer increased by 2.5 million in August. However, in September, they fell by 11 million.
The signing of Ninja was not a huge event that left a lasting impression.
This may also be because Fortnite is struggling – even Ninja was streaming other titles like WoW Classic in between.
What has been happening at Twitch? The watched hours on Twitch increased significantly in August when Ninja was gone – by 70 million. But then fell by 160 million again in September.
Twitch dominates market – benefits from WoW Classic hype
This is the result:
- In the 3rd quarter of 2019, Twitch’s share of streaming hours grew. Twitch’s market shares increased by 3.4% compared to the last quarter.
- August was a strong month for everyone – even though little happened in gaming in August. Responsible is probably the huge hype that WoW Classic generated in streaming.
- September was a weak month for all streaming platforms. The big hype around “WoW Classic” had already faded. New releases like FIFA 20, Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, or Borderlands 3 apparently are not titles for the streaming platforms. People might rather play them themselves.
- The switch of Tyler “Ninja” Blevins to Mixer apparently had hardly any impact.
The big winner in September was Facebook Gaming. They were able to gain against the trend. Overall for the quarter, they have also become less significant – just like YouTube. Both platforms are losing the percentages that Twitch is gaining.
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