Gamers Spent 2.3 Billion Hours Watching the Top 5 Games, 5x the Super Bowl's View Time
Three years after reaching its peak, game streaming is showing signs of slowing down, as the market grapples with high infrastructure costs, audience fatigue, and sharp competition from traditional gaming models, including downloads and cloud gaming. Still, billions of gamers continue to spend a shocking amount of time watching their favourite titles online.
According to data presented by Skinsluck.com, gamers spent a jaw-dropping five billion hours watching the five most popular esports games in a single year.
Gaming Watch Time Leaves Some of the Biggest Sports Events in Dust
Today, the game streaming space is more crowded and competitive than ever. In 2024, Twitch, the world's largest game streaming platform, reported over 6.9 million active streamers, showing just how tough it is to stand out today. But this huge base of creators comes with equally massive audience. Since 2020, more than 800 million new viewers have joined the scene, with the total reaching 1.5 billion in 2025. And that audience is spending a shocking amount of time watching their favorite games.
According to Esports Charts data, League of Legends was the most watched eSports title in 2024, racking up nearly 750 million viewer hours. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang followed with 475 million hours watched over the year. Three more titles also hit impressive numbers. Counter-Strike 2 was watched 434 million hours, while Valorant and Dota 2 followed with 355 million and 319 million hours, respectively. Together, these games generated 2.3 billion watched hours in 2024, and that is just the top five titles in the esports industry.
This figure becomes even more impressive if compared to some of the world's biggest sports events. For example, those 2.3 billion hours are more than three times the viewership of the 2022 FIFA World Cup Final, which saw 715 million hours watched. That's also five times more than what Americans spent watching Super Bowl LIX, with around 450 million total hours. Here are a few more staggering comparisons: 2.3 billion hours is roughly equal to the combined global viewership of all 24 Formula 1 races in 2024, and four times the total watch time of the entire 2024 NBA Playoffs.
Another 300 Million Viewers Will Flock to Game Streams by 2029
Game streaming isn't just leaving major sports events behind in total watch time, but no traditional sport is also currently projected to match its audience growth.
While big events like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics still draw massive audiences, their viewership isn't growing much, especially among younger people. On the other hand, thanks to nonstop content, strong creator communities, and massive popularity among Gen Z and Gen Alpha, platforms like Twitch and YouTube Gaming are expected to see around 300 million new viewers by 2029, reaching a total of 1.8 billion. All this proves that game streaming is not just competing with traditional sports; it's obviously pulling ahead.