As we all know, the coronavirus pandemic across the globe has created many complications, especially in regards to economic fallout, education, entertainment, and basic needs.
However, the live-streaming industry has had a major boost due to the pandemic – everyone’s staying home, so what more is there to do?
As we can see on the above image, the total hours watched on Twitch had a drastic increase from around 2.66 million hours watched in quarter 4 of 2019 to an astonishing 3.11 million in the first quarter of 2020, mostly due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
That’s a 17% increase – more impressive when we see that Twitch’s viewership numbers have stagnated across 2019 – and even declined near the end due to the moving of streamers from Twitch to other platforms like Mixer, YouTube, and Facebook.
The average viewers on the top broadcasters of Twitch have gone up in huge amounts as well. In the historically below average month of March, this year saw a huge increase of over 13% of average viewers across Twitch, compared to the relatively low percentage increase of 3% in November of 2019.
Since around 32.5 million American kids, as well as hundreds of millions of children around the world, are forced to stay home, watching and playing video games is a great alternative entertainment source. After all, there are no new movies, sports games, or concerts to be had.
And straying away from live-streaming content creators, the pandemic has also caused multiple events like musical concerts and artistic plays to be streamed online. Even my own youth orchestra – the EYSO, decided to gather recordings from all of its students and combine them into an online live-streamed orchestra event.
However, there have been numerous negative effects on the streaming industry as well. Twitch’s big annual European TwitchCon event that was supposed to be in Amsterdam was forced to be cancelled due to the outbreak, resulting in fans not being able to see their favorite streamers, or meet friends they’ve met through these communities.
Furthermore, many professional video game tournaments have been cancelled or postponed as well. Just as a few examples, the big Mid-Season Invitational of League of Legends, planned to be in China this year, was completely canceled, while the CS:GO major of ESL One Rio 2020 was postponed from April all the way to November. As a result, viewers have not been able to follow professional esports, and are eagerly awaiting their hopeful return in the fall.
Despite these negative consequences, the coronavirus pandemic has played a huge role in introducing new people to video games, as well as in expanding the viewership base of live-streaming platforms like Twitch.
While the war against the invisible enemy is raging outside, we should hope to find at least some solace in the virtual world of video games – at least for now.
-DZ