One Streamer Breaks Twitch with 2.5 Million Viewers
Notably, the stream was not in English, signalling the massive growth of streaming around the world
On January 11th, Spanish-language Fortnite streamer David Cánovas Martínez, known on Twitch as TheGrefg, broke Twitch records with a peak of 2.5 million concurrent viewers. What was supposed to be a Fortnite skin reveal stream became a truly landmark event, with so many viewers on the site that it crashed elements of Twitch’s API, payment processing, and UI. Impressively, Grefg kept his composure throughout the event but did make a point of calling both his mother and his video editor during the livestream.
Previously, the viewership record on Twitch for the highest number of concurrent viewers was League of Legends’ world cup with 1.7 million concurrent—from a company that spends millions a year in marketing. The fact that a one-man show was able to break that record all by himself through the power of word-of-mouth and internet virality is astounding. It reveals just how powerful and immense the Spanish-speaking gaming market is today and hints at what future growth for the gaming industry will look like.
To put it into context, Grefg’s stream alone comprised more than 35% of all total traffic on Twitch at that given time. In that moment, one stream held more power than hundreds of thousands of other streamers combined, some of whom hold multi-million dollar contracts and have millions of fans. Huge names in the English-language space like XQC, Hasanabi, NickMercs, Ninja and TimtheTatman made up only about 250,000 concurrent viewers combined at that same time. This means that Grefg alone had 10 times the total number of viewers as five of the top English-language streamers on Twitch combined.
So what does this mean for the future of Twitch? Well, business-minded Twitch experts like Devin Nash believe that non-English language streams are the future. They’re on the rise and will only continue to grow while English-language streams have already peaked in demand and plateaued. There’s no denying that Twitch remains a niche platform, but the non-English streaming market is yet to be fully tapped of its potential.
As more and more countries expand their internet capabilities, more and more people from around the world gain access and ability to watch livestreams and gaming content on sites like Twitch, YouTube and Facebook. So Grefg’s stream is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to tapping into a massive international market that craves content.
Increased diversity on Twitch is definitely something to celebrate — so here’s to a record-breaking 2021!
