For a long time, if you wanted to watch videos or livestreams of gamers playing video games, you had to go to Youtube, and that was it. That was all you had. But then, Twitch came along and gave you more options, and in some ways, a better service, and gamers have responded in force. Not just through individual streamers, but also through events like the Overwatch League. But when it comes down to the hard numbers Fortnite and Ninja are king.
Ninja is of course Tyler Blevins, who is considered one of the best Fortnite players on the planet, and is responsible for helping shoot the game into another level of popularity. In 2018 alone, he made millions of dollars off his Twitch stream through subscribers and donations, and when you calculate all the people who watched and listened to him during those times, the numbers are staggering.
All told, the number of hours (both in livestreams and syndication views) that people watched him amount to 226.9 million. That’s insane. And to show you how dominating that is, here is a list of the top ten most viewed streamers in 2018:
- Ninja- 226.85 million hours
- Riot Games- 99.31 million hours
- Shroud- 97.07 million hours
- Overwatch League- 74.60 million hours
- Sodapoppin- 51.95 million hours
- Dakotaz- 50 million hours
- Lirik- 44.71 million hours
- Tfue- 43.53 million hours
- ELeagueTV- 42.81 million hours
- LolTyler1- 41.47 million hours
So yeah, Ninja dominated. Though it’s also interesting to see that a developer of games in Riot Games got the No.2 spot. Overwatch League did really well too, which is why Blizzard signed a deal with them to make every match of the League available on Twitch, they know people are watching it there.
All of this adds up to an amazing year for the service. And regardless of whether Fortnite, Overwatch, Smash Bros, Call of Duty, League of Legends or some other title propels it even higher, 2019 is looking to be an even better year for Twitch.
