Gaming and esports live streaming analytics company Stream Hatchet has published its latest 2021 annual report, giving a detailed look into the video game live streaming industry’s most significant trends and insights. Focusing on four core areas – platform growth, top performing games and streamers, the gender gap and monetization, the report shows that live streaming watch time remains buoyant with 21% year-on-year growth despite expectations that demand would wane after the height of the pandemic. Viewers clocked up an average watch time of 653 million hours of live streaming per week across Twitch, YouTube and Facebook Gaming.  

The report also highlights the clear gender gap that continues to be a prevalent topic in the games industry, with only 5% of the top 200 gaming influencers being women. With toxicity and hate raids presenting serious problems in, Twitch, Youtube and Facebook Gaming have all made efforts to combat misogyny and hate speech throughout 2021; however, the distribution of women gaming creators has only changed by 2%. 

Key findings include: 

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• Viewers watched an average of 653 million hours of live streaming each week across Twitch, YouTube and Facebook Gaming in 2021

• Only 5% of the top 200 gaming influencers are women

• Twitch continued to dominate the video games live streaming market among western live streaming platforms accounting for 71% of the total hours watched in 2021

• Amouranth was the top female streamer of the year with 38.8 million hours watched, buoyed mainly by her “polemic” content, especially in the ASMR and Pools, Hot Tubs and Beaches categories. Despite this, she still only placed 46 in the top 100 streamers of the year by hours watched

• The top 1.2% of influencers generate 15.8% of the total estimated revenue. The average “mega tier” (>25k concurrent viewers per live stream) influencers generate an average of $841K per year

• Live streaming is no longer just about PC and console. Major mobile games such as Garena Free Fire and PUBG Mobile have helped foster massive audiences for the world’s most prominent gaming creators and esports events 

• YouTube (Live) was the only major western platform to experience a decrease in live streaming watch time (Q2 – Q4)

• Shooters & Battle Royales resonated strongly with video game live streaming enthusiasts in 2021, with the likes of Fortnite, Garena Free Fire, VALORANT, PUBG Mobile and COD: Warzone collectively generating over 1 billion hours watched 

• Open-world games such as Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto V, and Rust suggest a strong interest in future ‘metaverse’ platforms, with over 4.28 billion hours watched

• Riot Games dominated the live streaming charts, with League of Legends and VALORANT generating 18% of all the hours watched among the top 20 games

“What our latest report clearly shows is that video game live-streaming has managed to sustain a huge amount of the viewing numbers that the platforms picked up during the pandemic,”  said Eduard Monsterrat, CEO at Stream Hatchet. “Despite this growth, we still see a huge disparity in the top 100 streamers, which continues to be dominated by men. It will be interesting to see how the major platforms continue to make themselves a truly welcoming place for female, transgender and non-binary streamers in the coming months.”