Benjamin Schachter, an analyst for Macquarie Capital, says he’s looked at a year’s worth of Twitch viewership data. According to his findings, Twitch attracted a record average of 962,000 concurrent viewers in January, beating out the 2017 daily viewerships of MSNBC (885,000) and CNN (783,000). ESPN and Fox News were ahead with about 1.5 million each.
Schachter also said Twitch’s average last month was up 22% over January 2017, but that only half the games that landed in the top 10 weekly esports rankings last year remain there now. But newcomers PUBG and Fortnite have been big factors in driving Twitch’s growth in the past year.
It’s certainly good news for Twitch and parent Amazon, whose profits depend on serving ads during streams.