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YouTube and Twitch both saw sharp growth in live-streamers in 2017

YouTube and Twitch both saw sharp growth in live-streamers in 2017

The number of monthly active live-streamers on YouTube grew by 373% in 2017, while Twitch's live-streaming community grew by 197%, according to a year-end report from streaming-tools firm Streamlabs.

The company stressed that Twitch "continues to dominate with overall users" thanks to its large existing community. In the final quarter of the year, Streamlabs also tracked a 62% increase in Facebook's monthly active live-streamers, and 58% growth for Microsoft's Mixer.

All this is having an impact on Streamlabs' own business, which includes processing donations from fans to the influencers who are streaming on these platforms.

"As predicted, Streamlabs ended up the year with processing over $100M in tips to streamers, a 25% increase from 2016 and more than doubling the amount from 2015," wrote director of communications Antonio Hicks in a blog post.

By the end of 2017, Streamlabs was tracking nearly 705,000 active streamers on Twitch, YouTube, Mixer, Facebook and Twitter's Periscope.

The company has also ranked the most-streamed games of 2017, tracking 4.2m streamed hours of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), followed by 3.2m hours of League of Legends, and 2.8m hours of Fortnite.

Hicks was bullish about what 2018 has in store for the company, and for game-streaming generally.

"With the start of two eSports leagues this year, Overwatch and NBA 2K, gaming and streaming will be making its biggest push to date into the mainstream. It’s definitely an exciting time to be in the industry, and streaming platforms will be vying even harder for more streamers and viewers craving content."


Contributing Editor

Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)