Is Twitch viewership at its lowest point in four years?

Something interesting may have happened on Twitch in December.

Over the course of the month, the platform accumulated 1.58 billion hours of watch time–apparently its lowest monthly total in over four years (since July 2020), according to Streams Charts. But, at the same time, Twitch also saw an uptick in new streamers joining, and an uptick in the average number of concurrent channels live at any one time.

We say this may have happened because we can’t independently verify Twitch’s total watch time, and Streams Charts has previously reported watch time totals that were lower than estimates from other analytics companies like TwitchTracker

Streams Charts pointed out that it’s normal for December to be a slow month online, since both streamers and viewers are often AFK taking part in winter holidays. But what’s not normal is a year-over-year drop–and that’s what Streams Charts says Twitch saw. It averaged Twitch’s watch time totals from December 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, and says 2024’s total is 11% lower.

It’s not clear what’s contributing to this potential drop. Twitch is in a tough financial situation right now, and it’s been in hot water with streamers and viewers a few times this year over policy decisions, but we’re not sure backlash against it using AI to make emotes would cause a viewership dent this significant.

Streams Charts didn’t offer a theory, but did mention that one of Twitch’s biggest streamers, Kai Cenat, didn’t stream as much as usual in December. While that would potentially knock a couple million watch hours off Twitch’s total, we don’t think the full drop percentage can be attributed to him, either.

What’s also worth focusing on here is the other half of Streams Charts’ findings: the fact that more people are joining Twitch and going live.

In both October and November 2024, around 89,000 channels on average would be live on Twitch at any one time. In December, that figure pushed up to 92,392. Twitch also saw a bump in the overall number of active channels from 4,490,725 in November to 4,777,395 in December—a 6% increase.

Streams Charts notes that all these streamers broadcasted a more diverse range of content of content than usual.

“[I]t’s important to note that other key metrics for both viewer and streamer activity remain strong,” it wrote in a report about December’s viewership. “A positive takeaway from December was the variety of content on offer. Streamers broadcasted in 43,200 different categories, the highest figure of the year, second only to March.”

Just Chatting was the top category with 250.93 million hours watched, while Grand Theft Auto V was second with 99.06 million. Newly released games Path of Exile 2 and Marvel Rivals came in at #3 (69.99 million) and #7 (51.06 million), respectively.

There were noteworthy trends in who was streaming in December as well. Not one, not two, but four Japanese streamers were in Twitch’s top 10 most-watched of the month: fps_shaka, Junichi Kato, darumaisgod, and RTAinJapan.

GTA streamer fps_shaka was actually #1 across the entire platform, generating 8.39 million hours of watch time. Cenat, despite slowing things down from streaming 24/7 during his subathon, was still #3 with 8.01 million hours watched:

We’re curious to see (providing Streams Charts’ numbers are accurate) if Twitch’s viewership stats will recover in January, or if this is a more lingering slump. It’s worth noting that while a slump could indicate competitors like YouTube, Kick, and Rumble taking more market share from Twitch, several major streamers who previously transitioned to other platforms, like Ludwig and Valkyrae, have returned in the wake of their deals with those platforms expiring.

So, Twitch is clearly still offering something streamers want—but maybe it has to do more work to keep viewers coming back.