Twitch to hit 40 million monthly viewers in US by 2021

Amazon-owned game streaming platform Twitch will surpass 40 million monthly US viewers by the end of 2021, estimates a new report.

According to figures from eMarketer, 37.5 million people in the country will stream video on Twitch at least once a month in 2020, reaching 15.5% of US digital video viewers. This sets it on pace to reach 41.2 million monthly viewers in 2021, 44.2 million monthly viewers in 2022 and 47 million monthly viewers in 2023.

Twitch is the leading game streaming platform globally, but it is rapidly losing ground to Google’s YouTube, Microsoft’s Mixer and Facebook Gaming.

Peter Vahle, forecasting analyst at eMarketer said: “”As the pioneer in this space, Twitch has built a loyal and engaged audience by allowing viewers to directly interact with their favorite streamers. The big platforms, owned by the likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, are competing to sign big deals with popular streamers and esports leagues. Twitch will have to find ways to encourage streamers, viewers and advertisers to stay on its platform now that other attractive options exist.”

Mixer made aggressive plays into the space dominated by Twitch in 2019, signing exclusive streaming deals with top personalities Ninja and Shroud. Facebook Gaming similarly signed an exclusive deal with former UFC and WWE champion Ronda Rousey earlier this year.

Though Twitch is at the top of the pile, Mixer’s investments have already started to pay off. According to the annual State of of the Stream report at the end of 2019, Mixer saw a 149% increase in hours of streamed content watched for the year. In total, viewers watched 353.7 million hours of video on the platform this year, up from 142.2 million in 2018. The report estimates that Mixer now has a 3% share of the market