The numbers are in, and it looks as though Twitch still reigns as the top-grossing streaming platform for games content. A new report by SuperData says Twitch outpaced YouTube Gaming in 2019, but the race is tightening up.
As our sister site The Loadout reports, the SuperData report estimates that Amazon-owned Twitch generated $1.54 billion USD (£1.18 billion) in GVC last year, compared to YouTube Gaming’s $1.46 billion (£1.115 billion). GVC, the report explains, is the sum of ad revenue, donation revenue, subscription fees, and sponsorship revenue earned on any kind of gaming-related streaming video content, whether it’s a livestream or video on demand. As long as the content is about a videogame title or event, its revenues count toward GVC.
The report does some examination on the kinds of effects big exclusivity deals have on streaming platforms. While some of Twitch’s biggest names, such as Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins and Michael ‘Shroud’ Grzesiek, have moved to Microsoft’s Mixer and other platforms, Twitch has inked multi-year contracts with streamers like Benjamin ‘DrLupo’ Lupo, Saqib ‘Lirik’ Zahid, and Timothy ‘TimTheTatman’ Betar.
As The Loadout notes, these deals tend to indicate that exclusivity is going to be increasingly common in the coming years, but SuperData suggests that platform holders will need to find established, big-name streamers to make exclusivity a winning proposition from a profits perspective.
Another interesting bit of information in the report is on how revenues differ by platform. While both Twitch and YouTube Gaming profited the most from advertising, Twitch generates significantly more revenues from subscriptions, which account for 8% of its total share compared to YouTube Gaming’s 2% share.