Editor's take: It was another banner quarter for online livestreaming services as Twitch, Facebook and YouTube all made headline-worthy advancements during the three-month period ending September 30. It still blows my mind that livestreaming is so popular. Who ever thought being player two and watching others play games would ever take off like this?
According to Streamlabs' latest quarterly report (generated with data from Stream Hatchet), Twitch led all other streaming platforms in terms of total hours watched at 4.74 billion hours of content watched. Across all three major platforms, the total number climbed to a staggering 7.46 billion.
Interestingly enough, that's actually down slightly from last quarter, when viewers absorbed 7.71 billion hours of content.
Worth clarifying is the fact that this metric is labeled as "total hours watched" and is far higher than the "total hours streamed" stat, meaning viewers didn't watch 7.46 billion hours of "live" content.
In the total hours streamed category, it's a landslide for Twitch as the company captured 91.1 percent of the market share. That's an increase of 14.5 percent compared to Q2 and likely indicates that much of Mixer's audience went to Twitch when it shut down in July.
Streamlabs said Facebook passed one billion hours watched for the first time, claiming 14 percent of the total hours watched pie. YouTube Gaming, meanwhile, reportedly experienced the most growth in terms of hours watched with an increase of 156 million hours compared to the second quarter.
League of Legends developer Riot Games was the most popular publisher, with Tencent and Epic Games tailing handily. Unsurprisingly, League of Legends was the top game watched at 543 million hours followed by Fortnite with 426 million hours.
Masthead credit: Parilov