When Mixer, the live-streaming service owned by Microsoft, announced in June that had plans to shut down, Facebook gaming made a push to acquire the streamers customers.
However, the push was in vain. Reportedly most of the streamers flocked to the Twitch platform instead. Data shows that the share of broadcast hours on many major live-streaming platforms jumped this quarter by over 14 percentage points in a recently released report. This data show an equaling out to nearly just over the equal 14 percent market share held previously by Mixer.
According to a new report released by Streamlabs & Stream Hatchet, with Mixer now out of the picture, data showed that Twitch acquired up to 91.1 percent of overall hours spent streaming, between July and September on the platforms.
The report looked at all streaming activity conducted on Facebook Gaming, YouTube, and Twitch, and discovered that even though they made a push for Mixer members, Facebook Gaming only saw a growth of 3.4 to 2.4 percent. The data also showed that YouTube saw a slight shrinkage of 5.5 to 6.7 percent.
Mixer was an American live streaming platform for video games. The streaming platform, initially launched in 2016 under the name of Beam, before being acquired by Microsoft later in the same year. Microsoft then renamed the streaming platform in 2017 when it became known as Mixer. When rebranded, the platform was then integrated into the Xbox division, also owned by Microsoft.
The fact that Twitch won in acquiring the majority of Mixer members is more than a little surprising, as Facebook made an earnest effort to pick up Mixer members for their gaming platform. During its final month online, Mixer started an advertising campaign that presented Facebook Gaming to its member. Even today, Mixers website continues to forward visitors to Facebook gaming.
Although when it comes to determining where streamers are choosing to spend their time, “hours streamed” can be a useful metric. But what it all comes down to is that in the overall scheme of things, this metric doesn’t necessarily matter. These platforms, such as Twitch and Facebook Gaming, are competing primarily for viewership—and as a result, Twitch shows as having lost some vital ground.
A report shows that Twitch is now offering a market share of 63.6, down from a previous 67.6 percent. This drop should concern Twitch as its two competitors, YouTube and Facebook Gaming, both showed growth in market share this quarter. With the data showing that the Mixer platform showed only 1.4 percent of hours streamed, which means that the two services are growing at a much faster pace than that of Twitch.
When it comes to streaming viewership, this year has seen a massive explosion. This explosion appears to be attributed to the fact that people are staying in more than usual due to the current coronavirus pandemic. The same report indicates that viewership as a whole was up across all three services to the tune of 7.64 billion hours just last quarter, which shows an increase from 3.89 billion the year previous.