Esports makes up 9-17% of Twitch's viewership in 2018 so far

Three-quarters of the way through the year, Twitch is starting to see some interesting shifts in what its audience is up to, with viewership stagnating on top channels as mid-sized and smaller channels start to see more growth.

StreamElements has released a State of the Streaming Industry report to coincide with TwitchCon that shows several trends being bucked in Q3 of this year. For one, YouTube is beginning to inch its way closer to Twitch's viewership. It moved from 15% of total live streaming hours viewed in March of this year to 25% in September - though it's still a long way off from catching Twitch entirely.

Back on Twitch, the top 100 channels haven't seen any growth in combined viewership hours. These channels went from a total of 262 million combined hours in January of this year down to 254 million in September, though overall viewership hours are still rising across mid-level and smaller channel tiers.

It's possible that some of the stagnation at the top of Twitch when comparing January to September has a connection with Fortnite's dip in popularity in the last few months. After a peak of 151.9 million hours watched in July, Fortnite hours dipped to 131.4 million in August and 105.8 million in September.

The drop in Fortnite interest gave Activision Blizzard a chance to take its edge back in the last quarter. World of Warcraft saw 87 million more hours watched in Q3 of this year, likely due to Battle for Azeroth's launch. With its combined titles, Activision Blizzard beat out Epic Games for most popular publisher on Twitch for the first time since February.

Finally, the report notes an interesting figure - that in the midst of the rise of esports, it still makes up only between 9 and 17% (varying across the last year) of Twitch viewership and has remained steadily between those percentages over the last year.