Twitch & YouTube Live Are Leading Live Streaming Today

Footnotes, see below ¹ ² ³

Average Concurrent Streamers and Viewers by Platform

Twitch currently leads in the total number of average concurrent streamers and viewers that are live at any given point, while YouTube Gaming Live is a strong second. Both collectively are significantly ahead of Facebook Live, Periscope and Mixer in Avg. Concurrent Streamers and Avg. Concurrent Viewers, at least as it applies to non-private broadcasts open to anyone.

We believe that forms of live streaming that are working today are primarily based on the interest-graph, not the social-graph.

Cheering Haremking13’s $5 tip

Broadcasting is a one-to-many medium, and the people who stick around the longest to view it are those that are fundamentally interested in the content (interest-graph). This is very different from just casually watching a live video of a friend (social-graph), where many viewers tune out after a few minutes of saying hello. Asynchronous videos (eg. Snapchat or FB Newsfeed VODs) seem to be a much better format of interacting with your social graph via video.

Data collection footnotes:

This data was collected over a seven-day period towards the end of Q2, and is an average of that period, not the entire quarter.

¹ YT Gaming: This only includes data for YouTube Gaming Live, not YouTube Live overall. We are limited by what data is available. YouTube Live is certainly much larger overall when other categories such as sports, entertainment, politics and mobile are included.

² Facebook Live: This data only includes public, openly-accessible-to-anyone broadcasts. The majority of live broadcasts on Facebook are to friends-only, or privacy-restricted, and hence not open to everyone. Thus the total broadcasts and viewers on Facebook Live are much, much higher, but that data is privacy-restricted and not available. However when looking at open broadcasts on Facebook, it does enable a somewhat apples-to-apples comparison with other openly-accessible broadcasts on other platforms.

³ Estimated Viewers: YouTube and Periscope viewers are calculated using this. These are calculated by directly measuring the concurrent viewers in at least 25% of the broadcasts, and then extrapolating from measured averages to cover the total number of broadcasts.