The global gaming streaming market currently sits at around $8.4bn, and it is expected to reach $13.8bn by 2030. While Twitch and YouTube dominate the industry, there are a host of other platforms out there, and each offers something a little different to users and advertisers.
Here’s our guide to the major platforms, and some minor ones, too.
Twitch
Owned by: Amazon
Audience: 63% male, with 73% of users under the age of 34
Monthly active users: 240m
Best for: all things gaming, but also entertainment, music and sports
Ad formats: various options, including video, display ads, and streamer-driven activations
Popular streamers: Ninja (19m followers), Auronplay (16m), Pokimane (9m)
Twitch is the go-to platform for gaming content, in particular League Of Legends. In recent years it has also become a popular platform for watching other types of entertainment content, such as chess tournaments, music, art and talk shows. In 2020, US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made her debut playing the game Among Us — one of the biggest ever debuts on the platform at the time, peaking at 435,000 viewers.
YouTube Gaming
Owned by: Google
Audience: fairly evenly split by gender. A quarter of its users users Gen Z, a quarter millennial, and 20% Gen X
Monthly active users: 2.5bn
Best for: long-form gameplay videos
Ad formats: various options, including skippable and non-skippable in-stream ads, bumper, masthead and overlay ads, shorts, outstream, and creator partnerships
Popular streamers: PewDiePie (110m followers), Markiplier (37m), IShowSpeed (34m)
More than 50 billion hours of gaming content was viewed on the platform in 2018, with YouTube reporting more than 40 million active gaming channels in 2020. By the end of last year 1.9 billion hours of gaming content was watched, amounting to 6 billion monthly views. The most popular games streamed include Grand Theft Auto V, Counter-Strike 2, Fortnite and Roblox. Brands in tech, lifestyle and entertainment would have a natural fit in this space, and there are plenty of options for advertisers.
TikTok Live
Owned by: ByteDance
Audience: just over half are men. Users aged between 25 and 34 make up the largest group on the platform.
Monthly active users: 1.6bn
Best for: mobile gaming, in particular
Types of ads: a variety of formats, including Top View (when a user opens the app) and Pulse (contextual placements next to trending content)
Popular streamers: shroud (653k), duckiegaming (318k), bundun (220k)
In 2024 TikTok was the official partner of Gamescom, the world’s largest gaming event, which is held in Germany and attracts over 320,000 visitors. In recent years the platform has established itself as essential to the gaming community. At the time of writing #gaming has 53 million posts, #whattoplay 1.9 million, and #gaminglife at 1.2 million. Not to mention games like #roblox with 72 million, #minecraft 24 million, and #fortnite at 65 million.
TikTok says that half of its users watched gaming-related content in 2022, amounting to over 3 trillion views. And games like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (9.6 million followers), PUBG Mobile (2 million), and Garena Free Fire (1.6 million) consistently achieve the highest audience reach. In contrast, classic esports games, like League of Legends and Valorant, which are popular on Twitch, are less so on Tiktok.
In general, viewership for esports has been steadily growing on the platform, especially in Southeast Asia.
Facebook Gaming
Owned by: Meta
Audience: skews slightly towards men. The majority of users are aged between 25 and 34.
Monthly active users: 230m, active in 630,000 gaming groups
Best for: strategy and adventure gamers
Ad formats: various options, including image, video, slideshow, stories, carousel, and collection ads
Popular streamers: Alodia Gosiengfiao (8m followers), Stonemountain64 (3.4m), Unicorn IB (1.1m)
Facebook states that more than 900 million people play games on its platform each month, with the worldwide number of players [in 2023] reaching 3.38 billion. In recent years, though, Facebook has seen a decline in viewership, more so than its rivals. Facebook Gaming was previously accessed through a dedicated app, although this was shut down in 2022 as it struggled to compete with Twitch and YouTube. Gaming is now accessible from the main Facebook app.
Despite a decline in viewers, Facebook Gaming still has strong numbers of users, viewers and well-followed streamers. It is well set up for brands, through a variety of ad formats, in particular in-stream ads, which can appear before, during or after a live stream.
Alternatively, companies can work with a vetted Facebook Business Partner. These are experts who can help advertisers run ads, sell products and engage with audiences in this space.
Kick
Owned by: Easygo Entertainment
Audience: 18- to 24-year-olds are the largest age demographic on the platform. Around 75% of users are male.
Monthly active users: 241,000 (as of Q3, 2024 – a 200% growth rate)
Best for: gaming, slots and casinos, and music
Ad formats: the platform encourages advertisers to work directly with streamers
Popular streamers: Westcol (1.8m followers), AdinRoss (1.5m), SXB (1m)
Kick launched in late 2022 as a competitor to Twitch, and achieved 779m hours of streams watched in its first year. The current top streamers on the platform broadcast from a variety of places around the world, most notably Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Turkey, Argentina and Morocco. GTA V and Garena Free Fire are two of the most popular games streamed.
Kick has a more relaxed approach to moderation compared with Twitch as it allows gambling content, which is a draw for some audiences and creators. Streamers also get to keep more of their earnings (95%), compared with YouTube (70%) and Twitch (50%).
Last year viewership on the platform significantly grew, due to Kick diversifying its audience by recruiting creators from Latin America and the Middle East; those that came with their own fanbase.
Trovo
Owned by: Tencent
Audience: 33% of users are aged between 25 and 34. More than 75% of users are male.
Monthly active users: 10-20m
Best for: mobile first-person shooter games and related content
Ad formats: Trovo uses Uplify to place interactive ads in live streams and sponsor creators
Popular streamers: Atro (808k followers), SA777RAWI (239k), Itsonlyskillz (183k)
Trovo launched in 2020 as a community-driven alternative and competitor to Twitch, and it has various gamification elements, such as Spells and Treasure Boxes, to incentivise viewer engagement.
The platform is most popular in Russia, with over 70 per cent of traffic coming from users in that region. The audience enjoys watching game streams of mobile games like Call Of Duty: Mobile, PUBG Mobile, as well as games like Minecraft and Fortnite.
Bigo Live
Owned by: JOYY Inc
Audience: Around 66% male. Most popular with people between 25 and 34 years old.
Monthly active users: 38m
Best for: mobile games (for example, Garena Free Fire has had 6.2m hours watched since March 2024)
Ad formats: accessed through Bigo Ads and includes native, rewarded video, splash, banner, and interstitial ads
Popular streamers: Drebaby (6.4m hours watched in 2024), Tomi K (3.2m), Whiteboy maj (2.2m)
Bigo Live is a streaming platform based in Singapore, and was founded by ex-journalist David Li. It launched in 2016 and, as of Q3 2024, was the seventh most popular live-streaming platform worldwide. It is popular in Southeast Asia and Latin America (in particular Brazil).
It has tailored content incentives for creators, and while it doesn’t do anything radically different to Twitch (like Kick, with its relaxed moderation), it continues to grow. One unique aspect of Bigo Live is that it blurs the line between a traditional live-streaming platform and an all-in-one messaging platform.
Bigo Live was removed from app stores late last year, as it was under investigation for potentially harmful content. However, after implementing enhanced rules and measures it has since been reinstated.
SOOP
Owned by: AfreecaTV
Audience: Thai is the most spoken language on the platform (72%), followed by Korean
Monthly active users: 2.35m
Best for: video games, esports content and tournaments
Ad formats: display, ad balloons, promotional videos
SOOP (previously known as Afreeca TV) is a live streaming platform based in South Korea that hosts a lot of mobile gaming content. SOOP is also the sponsor of an esports League Of Legends team called DN Freecs. In November, the company began expanding internationally, and focused on Thailand because of its active esports scene. As part of its expansion, SOOP plans to work closer with studios like Riot Games (publisher of League of Legends and Valorant) and local partner streamers to provide content tailored to these markets.
CHZZK
Owned by: Naver
Audience: Over 80% male. Most popular with users between 18 and 24 years old.
Monthly active users: 2.5m
Best for: esports and online battle and shooter games
Ad formats: limited at present, although last year the platform introduced mid-roll ads to improve profitability
Popular streamers: Han Dong-Sook (32m followers), Wolf (28m)
CHZZK is a South Korean streaming platform that launched in April 2024, in response to Twitch announcing the termination of its business in the country. Both CHZZK and SOOP saw a surge in users after Twitch shut down.
The platform has made strides into esports, streaming high-definition broadcasts of the League of Legends World Championship. Some of the most watched games on the platform include League Of Legends, Minecraft and Valorant. It’s worth noting that the South Korean live streaming market is growing overall, and is expected to reach $493m this year.
NimoTV
Owned by: Tencent and JOYY Inc
Audience: two thirds are male, with those aged 18-24 the largest group
Monthly active users: 11.5m (outside of China)
Best for: live shows, game commentary and esports tournament fans
Types of ads: contact the Nimo sales team for advertising options
Popular streamers: Mixigaming (2.8m followers), Nhism (807k), Thầy Giáo Ba (442k)
NimoTV is the global name of Huya Live, a Chinese-owned streaming service. The platform is primarily used for video game live streams and esports, but also other live genres, including cooking, traditional sports and real life streams.
In April 2022 the platform operated in 14 countries, but lost more than two thirds of its viewers after it shut down broadcasting due to restrictions imposed by the Chinese government.
Despite these setbacks, NimoTV is still hugely popular in Vietnam, Morocco and Tunisia, with GTA V and League of Legends the games most streamed. League leads the pack as the most popular, due to increasing broadcasts from Vietnamese esports streamers.
Gosugamers
Owned by: Samson Oh
Best for: esports tournaments, news and editorial
Gosugamers was founded in 2002 as a media platform for esports, providing editorial and data coverage, match schedules and world rankings. The company is owned by entrepreneur, Samson Oh, headquartered in Singapore and has hubs in Vietnam, India and Indonesia — covering the growing esports industry in SEA.
While the company doesn’t appear to have direct options for advertisers on its platform, it has a strong presence on social media, most notably Facebook with 187k followers, and over 40k subscribers on YouTube.
DLive
Owned by: BitTorrent
Audience: over two thirds are male, with those aged 25-34 the largest group
Monthly active users: 5m
Best for: tech enthusiasts, gambling fans and Web3 games
Types of ads: at present, not applicable
DLive is an American streaming service which was founded in 2017 and has a decentralised structure built on blockchain technology. With its tagline ‘Your stream, your rules!’ the platform focuses on freedom of expression for its users, and unlike other providers, doesn’t take a cut of creator earnings. Its integration with blockchain has been instrumental in its recent growth.
As a result of its emphasis on free expression, DLive has a rather chequered history, having gained a reputation as a haven for far-right figures. Advertisers may want to approach working with creators on this platform with caution.
Featured image: Ron Lach / Pexels
