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Viewership of “Just Chatting,” a Twitch category dedicated to non-gaming content, like creators having conversations with one another or musicians hosting a mini-concert, soared by 138% year-over-year (YoY) in April. The category was the No.2 most-watched on the live-streaming giant last month, which overall saw 1.65 billion total hours watched in April — more than three times the viewership of its closest competitor, YouTube Gaming.
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Non-gaming content is the next frontier for Twitch, as it will help it both further engage existing users and pull new ones in. While “Just Chatting” remains the biggest category for non-gaming content on Twitch, it’s not the only one — or the fastest-growing.
The cancellation of live performances caused Twitch’s Music and Performing Arts category to more than quadruple in April, going from 3.6 million hours watched last year to 17 million this year. And for its part, Twitch isn’t just allowing this growth to happen — it’s looking to fuel it further. For instance, last week the platform announced a slate of original series unrelated to gaming, including reality TV and talk shows. For context, Twitch had 32.9 million monthly users at the end of 2019, per eMarketer estimates.
Twitch may be able to lure more brands to its platform with its rapidly expanding non-gaming content. Non-gaming content was already rising in popularity on Twitch before the pandemic, but the combination of stay-at-home orders and the cancellation of live events has seriously accelerated the trend.
It’s likely that some of this behavior will stick around in the new normal, which means going forward marketers will have a whole new profile of creator to work with on the platform. That could lead to more familiar opportunities — for instance, sponsoring concerts, partnering with athlete-influencers, or even just more abundant traditional influencer marketing — but on a fresh and exciting medium. As a result, the livestreaming platform and its creators could be worth a second look from marketers who are either disinterested in or unsure of how to approach the gaming and esports space.
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