Brief:

• Twitch is the No. 1 platform for streaming live video, accounting for 70% of all livestreamed hours watched during Q2 2019, per a study by StreamElements. The Amazon-owned platform experienced its first decline in viewing time with a 2% drop to 2.72 billion hours in Q2 from Q1, but still had a greater share of the market than YouTube Live (20%), Facebook Gaming (5.3%) and Microsoft's Mixer (3%).
• Most of Twitch's viewing time was centered on the platform's top 5,000 streamers, which collectively generated 2 billion hours of viewing time in Q2. Popular streamers Tfue, Shroud and Ninja were in the top five every month during the quarter, while LIRIK, Asmongold and xQcOW appeared in the top five for the first time in 2019, per the study.
• Streamers generated 76% of the viewing time among the top 200 channels on Twitch, compared with 24% for esports events such as the Overwatch League, ESL and Riot Games. Most viewers tend to watch popular esports games like Overwatch and League of Legends outside of a professional setting like a tournament, StreamElements' study found.

Insight:

Twitch continues to show its dominance in the market for streaming of live video, even as heightened competition negatively affected its viewership for the first time in Q2. YouTube Live has one-fourth the viewing time of Twitch, but still saw its livestreaming time grow to a record 284 million hours in May. Facebook Gaming grew to 200 million hours of viewing time in Q2 to surpass Microsoft's Mixer at 112 million hours, per StreamElements' study.

Twitch's strongest growth was seen in its "Just Chatting" category, demonstrating the platform's increasing significance as a social media platform as well as its core purpose of streaming live video content. The Just Chatting stream of vloggers who converse but aren't streaming their gameplay grew by 7.1% on Twitch to 180.1 million viewership hours in Q2, StreamElements found.

Meanwhile, a broader group of Twitch streamers can be considered influencers without being in the top 200. The top 200 streamers, which have an average concurrent viewership of 10,590 in Q2, lost viewership as others in the top 5,000 gained, according to StreamElements. The study demonstrates the power of influencers to affect Twitch viewing time more than esports — influencers who have drawn significant financial support from major brands in the past year. Corporate sponsorship of esports tournaments is expected to jump 34% to $457 million this year, researcher Newzoo said as the esports and gaming industries continue to swell in user and marketer popularity.

Among games, "Grand Theft Auto V" surged by 152% to 217 million viewership hours in Q2 on the popularity of role-playing among streamers such as Sodapoppin, per StreamElements. "Fortnite," the battle royale game from Epic Games, hit No. 1 with more than 300 million hours watched in Q2, although that marked a decline of 2.7% from the prior quarter.