The Covid-19 pandemic has had a major effect on the viewership numbers for every major streaming service. With people locked indoors with fewer options to entertain themselves, they have turned to streamers and esports tournaments to fill in the gaps. This led to a massive spike for platforms like Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and Facebook Gaming.
Streaming services are on the rise
Looking at the numbers provided by Stream Hatchet, we can see that viewership for streaming services have been steadily rising for the past few years. In Q3 of 2019 Twitch had a total of 2.8 billion views compared to 4.7 billion this year. The same trend is noticeable with YouTube Gaming, in Q3 2019 they had 724 million and in 2020 the number rose to 1.7 billion.
The increase in views is far starker at Facebook Gaming. While it does not have the same high volume of views as Twitch, the increase from 2019 to 2020 is much greater. In Q3 2019 Facebook Gaming had a comparably paltry 269 million views but by 2020 they had more than tripled their viewership numbers by hitting over one billion views.
This should have a significant impact on the esports and esports betting scene. If even a small portion of these new viewers are retained and keep watching well after 2020 that would be a huge number of new fans and an influx of new users for the betting sites. The spike may just be temporary, but the fans of streamers are still on the rise.
