StreamElements: Twitch and YouTube show modest growth in August

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The StreamElements report for August shows that streaming services had a pretty dull month. That's not unusual - the whole industry had a pretty slow month. But the two main game streaming sites showed an uptick in growth.

According to data from Rainmaker.gg, StreamElements' analytics partner, YouTube Gaming and Twitch have seen three straight months of growth, with a little more in August. Twitch posted 1.865 billion hours watched, while YouTube Gaming posted 305 million hours. Viewership had declined in the first few months of 2022, particularly compared to 2020 and 2021, and StreamElements itself assumed this was consistent with a return to pre-pandemic numbers.

Gil Hirsch, CEO of StreamElements, said in a statement, "Live viewership numbers are rebounding with hours watched for both Twitch and YouTube slowly increasing over the past three months. This follows several months of gradual decline in viewership as pandemic mandates were lifted and the peaks achieved during this heavy quarantine period were no longer sustainable.

As noted, the industry didn't see much activity during the month. No new games appeared on the top 10 lists for either major site, likely because few big games were released. There were a few new faces on the top streamer lists, with Kai Cenat and ElSpreen reaching the top 10 on Twitch. YouTube's listing also featured three VTubers.

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