Twitch Viewership Rises For 2018, With ‘Ninja’ Leading the Way

Game streaming has seen unbelievable growth this year, with Mixer and Facebook Live getting attention from the community. But Twitch continues to lead the charge, as new numbers indicate staggering growth for the company's top streamers, including a particular superstar.

The Esports Observer recently ran some numbers on the streaming site, with data compiled through TEO Analytics. In it, it showed tremendous growth for its top streamers, particularly when Tyler "Ninja" Blevins was involved.

The star accumulated roughly 226 million hours viewed for the year, which is more than double the viewers for the second place channel, Riot Games and its hit game League of Legends, which garnered just under 100 million. Shroud came close behind in third place with 97 million hours viewed.

Here's how the top ten Twitch streamers for the year ended up:

1. Ninja- 226.85 million hours
2. Riot Games- 99.31 million hours
3. Shroud- 97.07 million hours
4. Overwatch League- 74.60 million hours
5. Sodapoppin- 51.95 million hours
6. Dakotaz- 50 million hours
7. Lirik- 44.71 million hours
8. Tfue- 43.53 million hours
9. ELeagueTV- 42.81 million hours
10. LolTyler1- 41.47 million hours

As for the top ten Twitch channels of 2018, there were different people on that list. However, it still added up to quite a few viewers in all, with Summit1G leading the charge with over 72 million viewers. Here's that top ten list:

1. Summit1G- 72.45 million viewers
2. Lirik- 61.14 million viewers
3. IMAQTPie- 55.06 million viewers
4. Games Done Quick- 44.41 million viewers
5. Shroud- 43.16 million viewers
6. Riot Games- 41.59 million viewers
7. NALCS1- 38.24 million viewers
8. ELeagueTV- 37.07 million viewers
9. Sodapoppin- 31.76 million viewers
10. ESL_CSGO- 30.82 million viewers

The report also noted that long-time Twitch streamers "Shroud" and "Sodapoppin" saw an impressive year-over-year growth, even though it wasn't nearly as skyrocketed as Ninja's success after his all-star streaming Fortnite session with Drake back in March.

In addition, five of the top ten most watched channels were personality-based streams, indicating more interest in general streamers, although companies were popular as well, particularly with the League of Legends and Overwatch brands.

Fortnite played a huge part in the list as well, with three of the seven personality streamers on the list playing the game full-time for millions of viewers, which marks a huge change from last year's interest in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which was the top game.

You can read the report here. And if you want more Twitch-streaming goodness with "Ninja", he'll be hosting a live New Year's Eve special kicking off at 4 PM PDT tomorrow night, December 31.