Twitch had a pretty incredible 2014. Between breaking viewership records, expanding on to new platforms and the small matter of being purchased by Amazon, the market leader in game streaming showed no signs of slowing down.
Data released today shows that 100 million monthly unique viewers tuned in to Twitch by the end of 2014, more than double 2013’s milestone of 45 million. Those viewers watched 1.5 million different broadcasters for a combined 16 billion minutes.
Twitch
That growth is backed up by graphs from Web analytics firms Quantcast and Alexa, which illustrate Twitch’s relentless march upwards:
Quantcast
Alexa
It was a good year for Twitch’s international expansion too, with 12 billion of those minutes being watched from outside the US—double the viewing from outside the US since January 2013.
Esports, such as League of Legends and Dota 2, continue to drive big numbers for the company, with the IEM World Finals in Katowice attracting a peak of more than 640,000 concurrent viewers. Far from cramped venues that esports grew up in, the games were broadcast from such massive venues as Madison Square Garden and two former World Cup stadiums: Sangam Stadium in South Korea and the CommerzbankArena in Germany.
Twitch
While Twitch’s own 2014 retrospective focused largely on internal data and growth, it ignored what was probably the biggest change of all for the company. In August, Internet retail giant Amazon bought the streaming site for $970 million. Aside from the significant injection of capital, the near $1 billion purchase put a true price tag on Twitch which, despite its size and influence among one of the most sought-after demographics in advertising, was still largely unknown at the time.
Indeed, all this corporate movement, along with sustained sharp growth in audience, brought more attention than ever before from mainstream media to Twitch and especially esports as a whole. Outlets like the New York Times dedicated column inches to charting Twitch’s growth in the aftermath of the Amazon purchase, and published rich, in-depth features on competitions like the LCS and stars like Nadeshot. ESPN and HBO also dipped their toes into esports in 2014.
In December, Twitch made its own big acquisition when it bought GoodGame, the biggest agency in esports.
With the LCS and Awesome Games Done Quick already posting big numbers for 2015, Twitch’s growth shows no signs of stopping any time soon.
Image via Twitch
