Twitch and Facebook Gaming exploded during the pandemic – and they’re even bigger a year later

Today, StreamElements and its partner, analytics firm Rainmaker.gg, released the February issue of their “State of the Stream” report. This is a fascinating document because, as the end of the pandemic approaches, it is further proof that live streaming platforms have been one of the winners of the crisis. (You know, assuming there might be some winners at a global mass death event.)

The biggest finding from this month’s report is that in terms of viewing hours, Twitch and Facebook Gaming are up around 80% year over year. To be a little more specific: Twitch grew by 82%, while Facebook Gaming grew by 79%. For Twitch, that translates to over 1.8 billion hours of viewing in February; Facebook Gaming, on the other hand, logged 400 million hours. (For reference: In March 2020, as the pandemic began, Twitch erased 1.1 billion viewing hours. And as of last April, Facebook Gaming had passed 291 million viewing hours.)

These numbers are both massive and, I think, lasting: Both numbers actually represent a decrease from January, which was a month longer. To me, this suggests that the total number of people watching live broadcasts has increased dramatically during the global coronavirus pandemic.

That said: These numbers do not reflect the ongoing rollout of the vaccine – which in the United States has only recently started to increase exponentially. I’ll be interested to see if the numbers go down as the world returns to some semblance of normalcy. Even if they do, this hellish season of our lives at has firmly integrated live streaming as a mainstream practice.