Meta’s game streaming platform, Facebook Gaming, has experienced a significant decline in viewership according to recent data. According to data being presented by CasinoenLigne.com, Facebook Gaming’s market share has plummeted to 3% in Q1 2023 which accounts for just one-third of its market share from the previous year.
On the whole, the game streaming industry has seen a decline in viewership over the past year with Facebook Gaming being hit the hardest. Viewership began to decline sharply in 2022 and continued to plummet in the first few months of 2023, resulting in a substantial reduction in market share. Which is bad timing since, in 2021, Facebook Gaming started making a big push in the streaming space by hiring Twitch streamers to stream exclusively on their platform.
Analytics firm Stream Hatchet reported that global game streaming viewership has been declining for six consecutive quarters, although there was a slight recovery in the first quarter of 2023. Despite this, viewership remained significantly below the levels seen in 2021. In Q1 2023, gamers and eSports fans spent 7.4 billion hours watching gaming content on streaming platforms, which represents a 16% decrease compared to the same period the previous year.
Facebook Gaming played a significant role in this overall decline. The platform’s live-streaming viewership experienced a staggering 56% year-over-year drop in 2022. In response to this decline, Facebook announced in Q3 2022 that it would shut down its standalone gaming app. As a possible result of this decision, the number of unique channels on the platform created by content creators plunged by 74% year-over-year, dwindling from 2.17 million in 2021 to just 559,000 by the end of last year.
The latest data from Stream Hatchet reveals that Facebook Gaming suffered a massive 69% decline in viewership in Q1 2023, resulting in its market share shrinking from 9% to a mere 3%. As a consequence, the platform slipped to third place, falling behind South Korean platform Afreeca TV, which now holds a 4% market share. Meanwhile Twitch witnessed a 4% increase in market share reaching 74% in Q1 2023 while YouTube Gaming now holds 15% of the game streaming market, experiencing a 2% growth in the same period.
The decline in viewership has placed Facebook Gaming at its lowest point in years, with the platform now trailing behind smaller competitors from China and South Korea. In Q1 2023, Facebook Gaming ranked fifth in terms of hours watched, with a total of 255.4 million hours. This figure is nearly 100 million hours less than Chinese platform Nimo TV and 60 million hours less than South Korean platform Afreeca TV.
What factors could be attributed to Facebook Gaming’s drop in could be due to a number of issues such as contracted streamers going back to Twitch once their contract expired, the platform’s UI and layout, Facebook appeals more to an older user base, and even Meta’s politics could all be contributing to the drastic decline of Facebook Gaming.
Let us know what you think is the reason, or reasons, for Facebook Gaming’s decline.
Also check out our editorial about the potential dangers of Live-streaming and politics being mixed together:
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