A joint report from Streamlabs and Newzoo reveals that Mixer’s viewership is down despite more channels being actively used by streamers.
Following on from a…weird press conference…thing which saw Fortnite streamer and Twitch sensation Ninja announce his exclusivity deal with Microsoft’s rival platform Mixer, many wondered if this would be what would cause Twitch’s decline in popularity. While exclusivity as a business model is nothing new, the announcement that Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the most-watched streamer of all time, would only stream through Mixer no doubt shook Twitch up a little bit as many began to wonder if Mixer was, in fact, the better option for budding streamers and viewers alike. A new report from Streamlabs and the Newzoo Q3 2019 Live Streaming Industry Report has revealed that while Mixer has seen a large uptick in relevancy, it’s not the rosy picture of success many expected.
The report indicates that the number of hours streamed on Mixer has increased by 188%, no doubt due to the throngs on streamers that jumped Twitch’s ship in pursuit of the success that Ninja’s presence projected. Yet despite this massive increase in streamed content, viewership numbers have been down by 10.6% this quarter, which has no doubt resulted in lower average channel viewers dropping from 8.9% to 2.7% quarter-over-quarter.
Over at Twitch, the opposite can be observed with total hours watched improving by 4.5% while individual channels and unique streams have fallen by 32% since Q1. The average concurrent viewers on Twitch has increased by 3.5% while the average viewers per channel has jumped by 3.6% to 28.2 viewers.
But I know what you’re all desperately thinking: What about YouTube Gaming Live? Possibly the least relevant streaming platform has remained unaffected by Ninja’s exclusivity deal although that doesn’t mean Gaming Live hasn’t taken a hit this quarter. Unique channels are down by 25% while average viewers per channel has improved slightly. Concurrent viewers have largely remained unchanged since the last quarter.
What’s most interesting to me is how Ninja’s abandonment of Twitch has affected Fortnite Battle Royale. Despite having a continued quarter-over-quarter decline for just over a year, Ninja not streaming on Twitch has seemingly accelerated Fortnite’s decline by 23%. While it’s nowhere near a “dead game” I find it fascinating that the removal of one of the game’s key personalities from Twitch has had such a drastic impact on the game’s numbers. While it’s still early days, the competition between Mixer and Twitch is heating up. Where either platform goes from here is still largely up in the air.
The full report can be read here.
Last Updated: October 8, 2019
Raptor Rants
October 8, 2019 at 12:53
For Ninja this was a great move. He is financially set with this deal for sure.
But for Mixer I think they’ve spent more than he is going to bring in
Pariah
October 8, 2019 at 13:15
One of the regular streamers I watched described the move nicely. For Ninja, this is his retirement. He can relax now. While he was growing on Twitch and moving his channel forward he spent every waking hour working to grow said stream. Even when he was huge, it was always work work work. With this massive payout and the relaxed viewer count, he can now just chill and do his thing. He no longer needs to push so hard and can finally actually enjoy his success.
CrAiGiSh
October 8, 2019 at 13:25
^^ This.
Raptor Rants
October 8, 2019 at 13:35
Exactly this Pariah
He can now retire as soon as his contractual obligation for how long he needs to be on Mixer expires. For him this is fantastic.
HairyEwok
October 8, 2019 at 13:16
Microsoft at the moment with these stats…..
https://media1.giphy.com/media/YlbxzD78WJYeQ/giphy.gif?cid=790b761182e41ca789dc991ace17fd3b9d2c03c4082ac652&rid=giphy.gif
Raptor Rants
October 8, 2019 at 13:35
Hahahahaha
CrAiGiSh
October 8, 2019 at 13:25
Would be keen for a potential article on which platform would be better for South Africans to Stream on.
Mixer or Twitch.
Raptor Rants
October 8, 2019 at 13:35
Mixer has a smaller userbase but that also means an easier time to pull in users with visibility on the system because it’s smaller.
Twitch has a larger overall peak but harder to get in to. Depends on what you are trying to achieve I guess
HvR
October 8, 2019 at 13:44
As highlighted by this report. Less channels watched, with longer watch time and more viewers per channel.
Pariah
October 8, 2019 at 13:45
Viewer count doesn’t translate to financial prosperity, though there is often correlation. There’s a streamer I watch that has relatively low viewer count but he has some real money spenders watching him. He bought a house and supports a family of 4 on his own with only 150-ish viewers, which is nuts. Then you get streamers with 1000 viewers who pull in less cash than him, so it’s a weird thing sometimes. Of course with more viewers you’re going to have more subs so it’s definitely a good thing, but yeah. I’d be interested to see the money stats too.
HvR
October 8, 2019 at 14:27
True.
I was more talking inline with what Raptor said, these platforms recommendation algorithms promotos what most people are watching so when they hit that critical mass of a certain number of big channels all the recommendation goes to channels of a certain size and it is hard to even get a 100 followers