The Game Awards 2017 Gets Its Highest Viewership Number To Date

While this year’s The Game Awards presentation was rather interesting (“F**k you, Oscars!”), [...]

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While this year's The Game Awards presentation was rather interesting ("F**k you, Oscars!"), they certainly kept us entertained for a few hours, especially with the new announcements. And we apparently weren't the only ones.

Today, the organization announced that its 2017 broadcast saw its biggest numbers to date, tripling its viewership to over 11.5 million global livestreams. That's up 202 percent from the 2016 event, which saw a record-setting (at the time) 3.8 million livestreams.

"We are thrilled by the viewership, engagement and reaction to The Game Awards this year," said Geoff Keighley, executive producer. "With triple-digit viewership gains across the board, plus record setting social media metrics, one thing is clear: video games and gamers continue to grow in importance and prominence on the pop culture landscape."

The Game Awards also did remarkably well on the social front, with double and triple digit gains in engagement on Twitter, where the number of people tweeting actually doubled over the previous year with #TheGameAwards hashtag. Usage bumped up to 2.7 times over what 2016's usage was. The Game Awards was also the number one program that aired on December 7th, save for live sports, according to Nielsen.

This, along with the new level of social outreach The Game Awards was going for with live Twitch streaming and interaction, helped the show reach new heights. Of course, it had a number of broadcast partners to help out, including Facebook Live, GameSpot, IGN, YouTube, Steam, Tencent, PlayStation Store, Mixer and Kakao TV in South Korea.

The individual stats for the show are broken down below:

- On Twitter, #TheGameAwards was once again the #1 worldwide trend during the broadcast. 2.7x more people use the #TheGameAwards hashtag this year than in 2016, and 2x more people tweeted about The Game Awards-related content this year than in 2016. (Source: Twitter)

- According to Nielsen, The Game Awards was the most social 24/7 program on Thursday, 12/7/17, eclipsing broadcast and cable television in the United States. (Source: Social Content Ratings, 12/7/17. Excludes sports events.)

- On Twitch, 70% of the audience watching on /TheGameAwards interacted with the Twitch Extension – completing over 700,000 predictions throughout the broadcast. 1,372 Twitch broadcasters co-streamed The Game Awards, and 3,522 Twitch viewers correctly predicted the winners in all the in-show categories via the Twitch Extension. (Source: Twitch)

- On Steam, an integrated The Game Awards sale experience and the first-ever The Game Awards Game Giveaway fueled incredible viewership growth. Viewers on Steam Broadcasting watched an average of 70 live minutes of the Awards. (Source: Valve)

- In the three weeks leading up to the show, more than 7 million authenticated fan votes were cast in all the major award categories using The Game Awards website (via Facebook Logon), Google Search, Twitter DM and Facebook Messenger.

- To date, here are the livestream numbers for The Game Awards (does not include VOD viewership):

2014: 1.9 Million

2015: 2.3 Million (Up 23%)

2016: 3.8 Million (Up 65%)

2017: 11.5 Million (Up 202%)

Here's hoping to an even bigger show next year!

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