Twitch records more than 2 billion hours watched in March

GTA, Just Chatting, and actual residentsleepers drove the platform to its best month of viewership yet.

Image via Twitch

Twitch is still dominating the livestreaming content space. The platform amassed 2.055 billion hours watched in March, setting its highest mark ever after a slight dip in the previous month, according to data from Rainmaker.ggStreamElements’ analytics partner.

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Facebook Gaming also had a rebound month, jumping back to just below 400 million hours watched following a big drop in overall viewership in February.

Image via StreamElements

For Twitch, this record month was largely pushed by the continued growth of Just Chatting streamers and the explosion in popularity that carried Grand Theft Auto V all the way to the second spot on the platform. This is the first time in at least the last five years that GTAV has been the top game on Twitch, recording 181 million hours watched. 

Just Chatting remained the top category overall with 265 million hours watched in March. Every category in the top 10 outside of League of Legends experienced at least a three-percent increase in its viewership. And even League dipped by less than a single percentage point, holding onto the third spot with 143 million hours watched. 

Image via StreamElements

XQc once again holds the title of Twitch’s biggest creator, recording more than 30 million hours watched in March alone and blowing the competition out of the water. 

The biggest change in viewership came in the form of Ludwig Ahgren, who catapulted to the second spot on March’s most-watched list with over 16 million hours watched. This was entirely due to his subathon stream, which launched on March 17 and hasn’t gone down once since then, growing his total watch time by around 404 percent. 

Image via StreamElements

During that period, he also became the second most subscribed channel in Twitch history after surpassing 200,000 subscribers on April 6 after being live for 22 days.

Image via StreamElements

In addition, Ludwig’s stream was the most-watched “sleep stream” in March. Around 1.5 million of his 16 million total hours watched in March came while he was asleep on stream. Mizkif was second on that list with around 500,000 hours watched.

Author
Image of Cale Michael
Cale Michael
Lead Staff Writer for Dota 2, the FGC, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and more who has been writing for Dot Esports since 2018. Graduated with a degree in Journalism from Oklahoma Christian University and also previously covered the NBA. You can usually find him writing, reading, or watching an FGC tournament.