The COVID-19 pandemic that spread across the world at the beginning of 2020 was not only a big threat to public health, but also to the entire entertainment industry. While cinemas and theaters closed their doors to try to stem the spread of the disease, many people turned to home entertainment and eSports during periods of self-isolation. In March 2020, viewership on eSports streaming platform Twitch increased by 10 percent compared to the figures from the previous week.

In January 2025, video streaming platform Twitch had approximately 7.7 million active streamers, down from a peak of 9.89 million in January 2021. The platform experienced a boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many new users used the platform to connect with friends or try their hand at livestreaming. However, this trend normalized again towards the end of the year, and the streaming space has also grown more competitive as platforms apart from Twitch have evolved to attract streamers and viewers. Popular content categories on Twitch In 2024, most of the leading content categories on Twitch were all gaming-related – except for the top spot: Just Chatting. The general conversation category accumulated 2.8 billion hours of viewing time in the measured period. In October 2023, global Twitch audiences spent around 253 million hours watching Just Chatting content on Twitch, with the average viewer count of such content reaching 347 thousand. KaiCenat was the most popular Just Chatting streamer on Twitch in the most recently measured month. Game streamers Twitch is very popular with gamers and gaming audiences, and the ranking of the most popular Twitch streamers reflects this. Ninja (real name: Richard Tyler Blevins), the top-ranked streamer on Twitch, had 19.14 million followers in December 2024. Ninja saw a meteoric rise to fame when he was one of the first top-ranked players to stream the then-newly released Fortnite Battle Royale at the end of 2017. Second-ranked ibai (real name: Ibai Llanos Garatea) was ranked second with 17.19 million followers on Twitch. With more than 9.4 million followers, Imane Anys, better known as Pokimane, was the only woman among the most-followed Twitch streamers worldwide. Overall, women only accounted for nine percent of the top-ranked Twitch channels.

According to a survey conducted in October 2022, 37 percent of U.S. live stream viewers aged 18 to 34 used YouTube Live for watching live stream video content. Facebook was the second-most popular platform for live stream video.

Live streaming growing potential The popularity of live streaming content has been linked to the online gaming and eSports world, with global users amassing almost 28 billion hours watched across Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and Facebook Gaming combined in 2020. Outside the gaming world, live news and sports have dominated the rankings of the most popular type of content for streaming services worldwide.

However, several other sectors in the entertainment and e-commerce industries have benefitted from adopting live-streamed formats during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. From events to concerts, to so-called shoppertainment, users worldwide appear to be getting more comfortable with the live streaming video format. As of the third quarter of 2021, live videos presented an audience almost as large as how-to videos and tutorials, reaching more than 30 percent of users worldwide.

U.S. creators’ take on video While live streams might not yet be the easiest video format for creators to embrace, video is becoming an increasingly popular format for online content creators. In the United States, three in 10 internet users say they have created video content to upload on the web or on social media platforms. Additionally, among those who made money from their video content online, an average of 44 percent of creators earned between 100 and 999 U.S. dollars.