YouTube Gaming, launched last year, has yet to really compete with Twitch when it comes to live esports. There are a few regions where YouTube streams have become more popular than Twitch, like to watch Brazilian League of Legends games, but that’s an exception to the norm. That being said, YouTube seems to have found its first real breakthrough.

Last weekend, Supercell’s Clash Royale King’s Cup, streamed exclusively on YouTube, gathered more concurrent viewers than the NA ECS Season 2 stream happening on Twitch at the same time. That said, the Clash Royale King’s Cup would have only been the third most-watched stream at the time had it been on Twitch, indicating that Twitch’s long-held monopoly on esports streaming, while far from over, may be losing some ground.

To be fair, Supercell’s stream didn’t swipe away the competition. The FaceIT ECS stream, which was playing its group stage for North America—and especially the Cloud9 v. SK Gaming match (a rematch of the last ESL Pro League finals)—still had a higher concurrent viewer peak, at 65K.

But by the time the King’s Cup started, ECS viewership had already dropped to around 30k. In contrast, Clash Royale stayed steady at an average 38k for the rest of the evening, finishing with a 46k peak concurrent viewers, while FaceIT had a 33k average.

This is encouraging for YouTube, considering it has yet to find its public for live esports. Many other tournaments did better than Clash Royale last weekend on Twitch. The Supercell/YouTube partnership certainly has potential.

Synergy

There is without a doubt synergy to be found between developers that built up strong followings on YouTube, and YouTube’s live service. Their fans haven’t necessarily adopted Twitch yet, and YouTube Gaming is only a click away. By driving people from the developers’ website, or from influencers’ YouTube channels towards the live stream, any live event could rocket upwards in audience. And that’s exactly what the King’s Cup format did.

The King’s Cup format was a clever mix between YouTube celebrities and real esports competitors. Out of sixteen, eight spots were open for anyone to qualify, while the other eight were reserved for YouTube celebrities. Qualified competitors were matched against Youtubers in the first round, and then the tournament played out in a classic bracket.

The celebrities never really had a chance—only one Youtuber made it past the first round. But it didn’t matter, as their job was to bring followers with them. As time went on, and streamers got ousted, viewership kept growing, indicating that the competitive side of the game was enough to retain viewer attention. It was without a doubt a successful evening for YouTube.

But there is still a long way to go. Other partnerships with game developers could very well work on the same model, but we have yet to see it. YouTube’s huge gaming reach cannot be overstated. If it manages to leverage this correctly, YouTube has the ability to reach impressive heights.

For now, Supercell is planning to stream its next “biggest, most official Clash Royale Tournament ever!” on both Youtube and Twitch. It will be the perfect test to see if last weekend result was a fluke, or the start of a new trend.