State of Live Streaming in 2019: Fortnite player Tfue was the most popular with 87M viewership hours, League of Legends retook the top title from Fortnite, more
It's the holiday season, so our gift to you is our State of the Stream report created in partnership with Arsenal.gg.
Context & Ripple Effects
This year-end State of the Stream report caps a year in which Twitch's dominance looked unassailable: mid-year data already had Twitch at 2.72B+ watched hours in Q2 2019 versus 735M on YouTube Live and under 200M each for Facebook Gaming and Mixer StreamElements' Q2 2019 tally. Against that backdrop, two rankings stand out — Tfue's 87M hours made one Fortnite player the single biggest draw on the platform, and League of Legends clawing the top title back from Fortnite signals the game-cycle churn underneath Twitch's stable aggregate numbers.
First-order effects
- Tfue's 87M viewership hours make him Twitch's most-watched individual in 2019, concentrating the platform's audience and sponsor attention in one Fortnite channel.
- League of Legends retaking the top streamed title from Fortnite means Twitch's front-page and discovery inventory shifts back toward Riot's game as Fortnite's streaming pull cools from its 2018 peak.
Second-order effects
- With platform economics concentrated on a few top titles and streamers, the Fortnite-to-League handoff directly reshuffles which channels capture Twitch subscriptions and ad dollars.
- Rivals read the churn as an opening: Facebook Gaming's share of watched hours climbed from 3.1% in December 2018 to 8.5% by late 2019 Facebook Gaming's share gain even as Twitch's aggregate lead held.
Third-order effects
- The 2019 snapshot — one dominant platform, rankings driven by which game is hot — did not hold: by Q1 2025 YouTube led all livestreaming with 50.3% of watch hours and Twitch had fallen to 16.3% YouTube's Q1 2025 lead over Twitch and TikTok, showing title-driven Twitch centrality was a phase, not a permanent structure.
The trend: Livestreaming has evolved from a Twitch-dominated, game-cycle-driven market in 2019 into a multi-platform contest where YouTube and TikTok now split the majority of watch hours.