These are the top 10 Twitch streamers of 2018 and number one is exactly who you thought it is
With the end of 2018 within 24 hours from now, we take a look back on the most prominent esports events and personalities, and Twitch’s live broadcast platform is certainly one of the leading platforms in this field. We saw the millions of fans attend championships such as Overwatch and League of Legends on a regular basis, but the title of the best this year has been given to a single person whom we’re sure you know very well if you’ve been following the news
That’s right, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins is the number one, to no one’s surprise. With the growing popularity of Fortnite and its popular Battle Royal mode, the poster boy “Ninja” came out of 2018 with a number of acclaimed awards and achievements. Not only did he win a prize at The Game Awards 2018, but he went back to smash all the Twitch numbers you can imagine with the official unveiling of the top ten streamers this year.
The numbers come from TEO Analytics, which collected the number of hours watched of the most popular channels in 2018, with Ninja coming in over 200 million hours alone, surpassing rivals Riot Games and professional player Mike “Shroud” Grzesiek at second and third place with more hours than both combined as a he soared alone to the top.
The becoming of “Ninja” as he is now was the result of a number of important factors in his career, including playing Fortnite on a pro level before it reached its astronomical fame, in addition to his previous reputation with games like PUBG last year where he won the Gamescom tournament. We also can’t forget his collaboration with a number of high-profile celebrities such as Drake and Marshmellow, bringing together world-class celebrities and video games in a way we’ve never seen before, thereby strengthening his reputation and Fortnite fame as well.
Considering last year, the rise of “Ninja” to the top was not the only interesting thing. When compared with the same figures from 2017, we saw the growth of Twitch platform as a whole, with a number of celebrities reaching almost double the number of viewing hours, notably Shroud, who moved from being in fifth place with 43 million watch hours to third with nearly 100 million, Sodapoppin as well rose from 30 to 51 million watch hours.
Riot Games, with its 50 million hour year-on-year improvement, was the second best performer of the year, with Overwatch scoring Top 10 for the first time with the start of Overwatch League, which saw a total of 74 million hits at fourth place.
The increase was not limited to the number of hours spent by fans watching their digital celebrities, but also the total number of viewers at once or “Concurrent Viewership,” where Shroud averaged over 30,000 doubling from 16,000 last year, For Sodapoppin, it was 23,000 from 16,000 last year. These figures are indicative of the fact that the Twitch platform has become very popular and it’s not showing any slowdowns come 2019, making it one step closer to other major social networking sites such as Facebook and Youtube.
Not all news are good for some, as followers of a number of other famous names on Twitch may be disappointed to see that their favorite streamers have not been able to enter Top 10, especially with the total absence of Summit1G despite last year’s 70 million first place. And DrDisrespect, who used to call himself “face of Twitch”, has also failed to appear and achieve any impressive numbers.
You can see the list of top 10 celebrities on Twitch below, and you can find more interesting numbers at the following link (Thanks EsportsObserver).
