The Game Awards 2018 Broadcast Doubled Its Viewership Over Last Year’s Show

Last week was a big one for the gaming world, thanks to The Game Awards and the many surprises it had in store for fans, including Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Mortal Kombat 11 and the reveal of the newest Dragon Age game. But the real winner of the show, besides the award recipients, were Geoff Keighley and his team.

Today on Twitter, the host/producer revealed that viewership for this year's Game Awards doubled what it did last year, with 26.2 million global livestreams. That's a 128 percent increase from 2017's 11.5 million, making the show a tremendous hit.

"This year viewership of #TheGameAwards more than doubled over last year to 26 million live streams. This is simply unbelievable. Thank you for watching and supporting us across these past 5 shows. Gaming only keeps growing," Keighley said in his tweet.

Twitch saw the biggest part of this audience, though other channels contributed to its success as well. "Viewership was up across the board on most major platforms- and on Twitch, the show reached a peak of 1.13 million concurrent viewers, one of the largest streams in history on that platform. On YouTube viewership doubled YOY, plus our expanded distribution in China," he explained.

The show was also the place to see some amazing sights, such as Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime, Sony's Shawn Layden and Microsoft's Phil Spencer taking the stage at the same time (for the first time ever), along with live musical performances and Tyler "Ninja" Blevins sharing a "shellfie" with Pepe Prawn from The Muppets.

In a press statement, Keighley said, "Five years in, it's amazing to see The Game Awards continue to grow both domestically and internationally. These results further validate our focus on an all-digital, no-friction approach of sharing this show globally across more than 45 video platforms, not to mention the growing interest and passion for video games around the world."

The show also scored big on social media, with the number one worldwide trend on Twitter for the fourth year in a row, and increased usage of #TheGameAwards hashtag by 1.6 times over last year. Over on Chinese social platform Weibo, posts related to the show garnered 56 million views across 310,000 individual postings.

Congrats to Keighley and his team on another great show. So, same time next year, Geoff?

Miss out on The Game Awards? You can watch it again here; and catch up on all of WWG's coverage here!