YouTube’s E3 Live Stream Garnered Eight Million Views In 12 Hours

YouTube just completed one of its biggest live streams of all time. The Google-owned video site’s live stream of this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) pulled in a whopping eight million views within the first 12 hours of coverage on June 15, 2015.

Though YouTube’s E3 stream began broadcasting E3 coverage on June 14, the official live stream event, hosted by Focus Features’ Self/less, kicked off the next day with hosts Geoff Keighley and Rooster Teeth. The hosts covered game play content, trailers, and interviews with game developers and creators, including Telltale Games

(the studio behind The Walking Dead titles) and professional skater Tony Hawk.

Overall, the YouTube E3 live stream on June 15 pulled in over 500,000 comments from viewers, who watched roughly two million hours of live content over the course of the day. Like a true geek and game professional, Keighley quantified that watch time by saying it would allow someone to travel to Pluto and back a total of 12 times.

“Producing The Game Awards opened my eyes to the size of the audience that’s out there for digital video game programming,” Keighley said in an email. “But even that success didn’t prepare me for the result of partnering directly with YouTube for live programming about E3. Not only did we reach an audience that rivals the scale of basic cable —  it was an audience that stayed with us all day and kept engaging with the content. E3 was a nice validation of the opportunity that exists for big scale live programming on YouTube.”

You can watch the replay of YouTube’s E3 coverage on the GameSlice channel.