A Fortnite tournament held over the weekend broke Twitch’s record for most concurrent viewers. There’s just one catch – the tournament was streamed on YouTube.
Up your game with our Fortnite tips and tricks.
Spanish YouTuber elrubiusOMG, whose real name is Rubén Doblas Gundersen organised a custom event with 99 other YouTubers in Epic’s battle royale. The three hour stream drew more than 1.1 million concurrent viewers at its peak, beating popular Fortnite personality Ninja’s stream with Drake from a few weeks ago by a healthy margin.
In fact, while Ninja still holds the record for the largest livestream not hosted by an organisation (on Twitch), Gunderson is challenging for the biggest gaming livestream ever. The Eleague Boston Counter-Strike Major was also watched by around 1.1 million people at its peak. That topped out at 1,130,000 viewers, while the highest figure I can find for Gunderson’s stream is 1,085,000, putting him just slightly behind, although that may not be his highest viewership. Still, it’s pretty impressive, given that this stream was the work of individuals rather than an esports broadcaster.
Gunderson’s stream wasn’t YouTube’s largest ever – that title is held by Red Bull’s 2012 Stratos Jump, which had around eight million viewers. It shows, however, that while Twitch may be the most familiar name in streaming, YouTube is able to at least challenge it from time to time.