Esports Viewership Up 15% in Q1 2023, Co-Streaming on the Rise: Stream Hatchet Report

Esports viewership saw a 17% increase in the first quarter of 2023 despite a decline in gaming livestream viewership, according to a Stream Hatchet report.

The Esports Live-Streaming Trends Report also found that authorised co-streaming boosted esports viewership, with Call of Duty League witnessing a 195% increase in viewer hours.

The report identified VALORANT streamer Tarik ‘tarik’ Celik as the most-watched co-streamer, followed by DOTA 2’s ‘Nix’, Fortnite and Minecraft’s elspreen and Spanish variety streamer Ibai.

Last month, TSM became the most-watched esports organization with 14.6M hours watched, surpassing KOI’s 13.9M hours watched. TSM generated 13.5M hours watched through content creation, with the remaining 1.1 million hours coming from esports competition.

TSM’s most popular streamed game was Apex Legends, which generated 3.5M hours watched by TSM_ImperialHal and Mande. The majority of TSM’s esports viewership came from the VALORANT Challengers North American Split and the Spring LCS season.

Seven of the top ten teams in March generated more than 60% of their hours watched through content creators, while Fnatic, LOUD, and T1 generated the majority of their watchtime from esports. Fnatic generated the most esports hours watched with 9.2 million, LOUD generated 9M, and T1 generated 8 million hours watched. Fnatic and LOUD’s VALORANT team performed well in the VCT: LOCK//IN finals, generating 5.4M hours watched during their match and 7.1M and 8.2M hours watched, respectively, in March.

T1 generated over 80% of its watchtime last month from esports viewership, with their playoff matches versus KT Rolster at the end of the month bringing in the most viewership, peaking at 1.2M viewers.

The report also found that YouTube increased its market share of large events this quarter by 10% measured against Twitch, while content creators represented the majority of viewership for esports teams.