• by Colin Kirkland , August 5, 2024

The second quarter of 2024 was not favorable for Amazon-owned livestreaming platform Twitch, which lost significant market share and faced declining viewership in the gaming and esports sectors compared to competitors like YouTube and newcomer Kick.

According to data by Streaming Charts, Twitch experienced a decrease in overall viewership by almost 12% with 4.8 billion hours watched during the quarter, while YouTube Live totaled 15.2 billion hours watched, showing a 20.5% increase since the first quarter.

After achieving its highest monthly viewership in two years in January of 2024, Twitch adjusted its multicasting rules in February, ending the option for content creators to simultaneously stream their content to Twitch and external platforms, making it harder to amass as big of a following.

“If the growth trend of YouTube Gaming continues, the platform could become the leading game streaming service in the West by the end of the year,” Streaming Charts’ report reads.

In addition, a live streaming trends report by GameSquare-owned streaming analytics firm Streams Hatchet shows Twitch losing 10% of its market share in the second quarter, falling from 70% in Q2 2023 to 60.3% this year.

Meanwhile, competitors YouTube and Kick both increased their market share by 5%, with YouTube possessing 23% of the market and Kick, which has gained notable popularity since its founding in 2022, possesses a 5.5% of the market.

The report also shows that while overall streaming consumption is up for the second quarter by 10% year-over-year, esports viewership on streaming platforms saw a minor decline of 1% in attention, falling short by only 7 million hours watched compared to last year, totaling 654 million hours watched in the quarter.

After being acquired by Amazon in 2014, Twitch is not profitable, and based on internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Twitch employees are concerned that Amazon won't continue to invest in developing the platform, resulting in further layoffs.

At the start of the year, Twitch laid off 500 employees, or 35% of its workforce, in addition to the 400 laid off in March and 180 let go in late 2023 when Amazon Games shut down its Crown channel on Twitch.