Stream Hatchet

🌍 MENA's Live Streaming Market Has Grown 5x in Four Years 📈 The MENA region's huge government investment in gaming has been fostering a culture of digital-first entertainment. And streaming has benefited: MENA's total quarterly hours watched climbed from 95M in Q1 2022 to 490M in Q1 2026, a more than 5x increase. At the heart of that growth is Kick which generated 81.4% of all MENA live streaming viewership in Q1 2026. That's largely due to one big policy decision: In February 2024, the Turkish government restricted access to Twitch over gambling content concerns, and Türkiye's enormous streaming community needed a new home 🇹🇷 Kick compromised with Turkish authorities, however, and became the obvious destination for migrating streamers. Twitch's MENA viewership dropped 75% as a result, from 107M quarterly hours in Q1 2024 to just 26M by Q1 2026. And like that, an entire country's platform landscape was reshaped in <2 years. At the top of that Kick ecosystem sit two Jordanian streamers 🇯🇴 Absi, self-described as "The No.1 Gaming Streamer in the Region (almost)", actually DOES lead all MENA creators with 34.3M hours watched, built on PUBG Mobile and EA Sports FC content 🔫⚽ Coming in second is Maherco, broadcasting from his iconic spaceship-themed studio, with 25.4M hours across gambling streams and Rocket League. Together Absi and Maherco they out-performed the other eight top MENA creators combined. One hidden gem in the games data: GTA V seemingly sits at 9.0M hours, butttt Respect RP, a dedicated Arabic-language RP server running since 2020, adds another 8.3M on top. Count them together and GTA V is comfortably the most watched game in MENA at 17.3M hours. GTA VI's effect should be HUGE for MENA. We go a lot deeper than this though with more insights and specifics in our full State of MENA blog. Check it out here ➡️ https://buff.ly/OQwfUxT

🎮 Q1 2026 Esports on Live Streaming: A New Record 5.9M Peak Viewers ⚔️ Last week you (hopefully) saw that our Q1 2026 Live Streaming Trends Report is now out ‼️We wanted to show off a bit of the data inside, specifically esports which had a phenomenal first quarter. League of Legends, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and Counter-Strike finished as the three most watched games by esports viewership in Q1 2026, with 154M, 146M, and 140M hours watched respectively. Just 14M hours separated first from third across an entire quarter. But among those titles, the moment of the quarter belonged to the M7 World Championship. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang's flagship tournament set the record as the most watched mobile esports event ever: 123M hours watched and a totally bonkers 5.9M peak viewers 🤯 That 123M hours accounted for 84% of MLBB's entire Q1 total, packed into a 22-day window in Jakarta. Aurora Gaming PH claimed the title on Indonesian soil in the grand final, and the top 5 co-streamers (all on YouTube, all Indonesian or Filipino) combined for 16.7M hours watched 🇵🇭🇮🇩 Now, let's try to put that 5.9M peak in perspective. First off, The LCK Cup for League of Legends, still an incredibly popular event, had just 1.5M peak viewers. Even outside esports, events don't get that much attention usually. The Kings League World Cup Nations 2026 pulled 2.2M peak viewers, and PlayStation's State of Play hit 2.1M. Those two events beat out every esports tournament EXCEPT the M7. There's more detail in the full blog, plus a little peak at how tournament organizers like BLAST are rallying the communities of different games. Check it out ➡️ https://buff.ly/GRAuVZP

😈 Mephisto Comes for Sanctuary Today, and Wanderers Are Ready on Streaming 🪓 Blizzard Entertainment has hyped Diablo IV's second expansion, Lord of Hatred, as having the most new content yet, including two new classes: The returning Paladin, and the brand new Warlock. With the titular Mephisto on Sanctuary's doorstep, this is the final reckoning... Scary 🙈 Let's look back at something less terrifying: Diablo IV's history on live streaming. The game launched in Q2 2023 with a massive 177M hours watched, then dropped to a floor of 8M by Q1 2024. But the Loot Reborn update, a full-on itemization overhaul, reversed this slide by addressing core late-game complaints. Then Vessel of Hatred arrived in Q4 2024 and pushed it further still: 24M hours watched, the highest quarterly total since Q3 2023. After that spike, viewership settled into a steady 5-8M plateau through 2025, sitting at 5M heading into today's launch. Before the Lord of Hatred bandwagoners take over, we want to shout out the creators who kept the fires of Hell burning even in the quieter months between updates. These are Diablo IV's true core, the channels the community theorycrafts with and will flock back to today 🔥 Rob2628 (1.9M hours watched) and wudijo (1.3M) are in a tier of their own over the past six months. Both are German, and both are Diablo lifers with roots going back to Diablo III, and both are known for min-maxed, Pit-pushing gameplay that the hardcore faithful live for. The next three creators, jessirocks (261K), DatModz (253K), and VITABLO (208K), are a gulf behind. But interestingly, 4 out of these 5 streamers (DatModz excluded) are German. The game clearly has a strong, persistent fanbase there 🇩🇪 No doubt then that these German creators are hyped for what is set to be a bigger launch than 2024's Vessel of Hatred DLC. You can read all about how that DLC performed, and how other games have used DLC to boost awareness, right here ➡️ https://buff.ly/6EJgpCA

⚽ The Sidemen Charity Match 2026 Scores £6.2 Million for Worthwhile Causes 💖💰 If you ever needed a reminder of the pulling power of streamers, here it is: 90,000 fans packed into Wembley on April 18th for a content creator football game, with tickets selling out in a record 2.5 hours 🏃 The match delivered: It was a 10-10 thriller decided on penalties, with KSI lining up for the YouTube All-Stars as they took a 4-1 shootout win for the second year running. On the other side, Jynxzi bagged two goals to take Man of the Match. Live streaming fans tuned in for all of it. The match generated 5.3M hours watched, peaking at 2.3M concurrent viewers with 1.5M watching on average. 86.8% of that viewership came through the official Sidemen channel directly, with 13.2% coming from other creators and their viewers. That includes co-streamers like Ibai, who led at 135K hours watched, with Caedrel (125K) and ohnePixel (121K) right behind him. Hivise and Im_Dontai rounded out the top five, combining for 469K hours watched across a lineup spanning four countries. The result of all this hype was Sidemen Entertainment raising £6.2 million raised for Bright Side and M7 Education, bringing the series' all-time charity total to over £14.7 million ✨ The Sidemen Charity Match is just latest in a run of wins for sports content on live-streaming. Read all about how sports is reaching new audiences here ➡️ https://buff.ly/lkCUmNl

🛰️ Capcom's New IP Pragmata Hacks Its Way Into Players' Hearts 👧🤖 Pragmata, @Capcom's sci-fi action-adventure game, launched on April 17th and sold over 1 million copies in its first 48 hours (with a 97% positive on Steam!). That's a lot of faith in Capcom, supporting new IP against a market full of sequels and remasters. Pragmata's debut week on live streaming generated 8.4M hours watched across 35K unique channels, with a peak of 158K and 50K average viewers. These kinds of numbers that suggest audiences quickly fell in love with Hugh and Diana 💖 And that's worldwide love: Five channels from the four corners of the world led the debut week 🌎 That includes zackrawrr (or asmongold if you prefer) at 371K hours watched, way out in front across Twitch and Kick at roughly 3x the next closest channel (Russian streamer bratishkinoff at 123K hours watched). Also taking to space were Korean streamer 풍월량 (Poong Wol-ryang) at 117K HW, American streamer Maximilian_DOOD (typically a big fighting game supporter) at 116K HW, and Brazilian streamer alanzoka at 105K HW. That's English, Russian, Korean, and Portuguese-speaking audiences all showing up for a lunar sci-fi adventure about a gruff spaceman and his android space daughter - truly out of this world reach for Capcom 👽 Capcom is a great example of one of the many Japanese publishers captivating live-streaming viewers. Curious to know more about the full Japanese streaming landscape? Check out our deep dive here ➡️ https://buff.ly/bKw0nmw

‼️ The Q1 2026 Live-Streaming Trends Report Is Here ‼️ And big news: We're officially including TikTok Live data every quarter from now on 🎶 Super crucial, since if you include it, then TikTok Live accounted for almost half of all live-streaming viewership in Q1 2026! (with total hours watched hitting 17B) But we go deeper too: 📺 Platform picture: TikTok Live's near-50% viewership share stands out, but TikTok Live actually dipped from Q4 2025 while other platforms rose to meet it. 🎮 Gaming shifts: New releases Resident Evil Requiem and Crimson Desert were the stand-out success of Q1, while World of Warcraft surged to the #8 game on live streaming thanks to its Midnight expansion. 🥜 Creator spotlight: ARC Raiders "PTuber" TheBurntPeanut rode the game's popularity to success, combining engaging content with a 24/7 channel strategy to become (by far!) the most watched creator this quarter. We have in-depth insights on all these shifts, plus events, esports, and non-gaming content... And best of all, it's totally free! Click here to download right away and become the most knowledge streaming brain in your office 🧠⬇️ https://buff.ly/ZmZ1J0A

🚴 CDawgVA Just Cycled Up $1.47M for Charity Across Japan 🗾 For the past five years, CDawgVA has strapped on his helmet and cycled across Japan for two weeks straight to raise awareness for the Immune Deficiency Foundation (inspired by his close friend, famous VTuber Ironmouse 🐭) Mousey joined virtually throughout, cheering on CDawgVA and his riding buddy Chris Broad (Abroad in Japan) as they tackled their latest cross-Nippon trip for Cyclethon 5. This time, their route took them 1,300km from Ōma at the very tip of Honshu all the way to Osaka (a new finish line for the pair). Along the way, CDawgVA and his crew raised an incredible $1,470,000 for the Immune Deficiency Foundation - a new record, and pushing Connor's all-time Cyclethon total past $5 million 💰 This is an incredible feat, and it's all been supported by the fans who tuned in throughout CDawgVA's journey. On his Twitch streams alone, Cyclethon 5 pulled in 2.7M hours watched across 142 hours of airtime. Guests along the route helped to hook in viewers, including Jschlatt, PewDiePie, Garnt (Gigguk), and Robcdee. A few days stood out in the data: 🚴 Opening day (Apr 5): 192K HW, a strong start right out of the gate. 🎤 Jschlatt days (Apr 6-7): Day 3 hit 224K HW, second highest of the whole event. 🏁 The Osaka finish (Apr 19): 234K HW, the biggest day of Cyclethon 5, saw the chat going wild as they crossed the line. Cyclethon shows the impact a creator's community can have when it's channeled towards the right cause. If you're looking to find a creator that can bring the best out of your next initiative, we want to help you connect with some advice for 2026 ➡️ https://buff.ly/SO9EEWF

↗️⌚Overwatch's 2026 Esports Season Is Soaring Across The Globe 🌍 Stage 1 of the Overwatch Champions Series (OWCS) has wrapped up across NA, EMEA, and Japan, already bringing in big numbers: Combined, the three regions generated 9.2M hours watched. We wanted to look a little closer at each of these regions: NA: NA led the charge with 4.0M hours watched and a 159K peak. Dallas Fuel ran the table with a perfect 5-0 regular season before taking down Spacestation Gaming 4-1 in the grand final. EMEA: EMEA was close behind NA at 3.3M hours watched and a 144K peak. Twisted Minds went 15-0 before beating Virtus.pro 4-1 to defend their world title. Japan: Japan rounded things out with 1.9M hours watched and an 81K peak. VARREL dominated their region with a 5-0 regular season and took the playoff title too. Regardless of what region you were tuning into, there's a big chance you were doing it by watching a co-streamer. EMEA posted the highest co-streamer ratio overall at 44.6%, compared to 37.6% in NA and 36.7% in Japan. And, incredibly, Emongg was the most watched co-streamers across ALL THREE regions, pulling 302K hours watched in NA, 297K in EMEA, and 220K in Japan 🥇 Beyond Emongg, the most watched region-specific co-streamers were EMEA's Toniki (170K), NA's Aspen (155K), and Japan's ta1yo_tv (50K). But Stage 1 still has LOTS more to give from the Blizzard Entertainment and ESL FACEIT Group - EFG partnership! China, Korea, and Pacific haven't wrapped up yet, with Korea and Pacific's winners facing off against Japan in the OWCS Asia Stage 1 Championship. When you take this esports dominance and combine it with the success of Overwatch's recent rebrand, it shows a resurgence in the Hero Shooter's popularity. Not familiar with the rebrand's success? We dug into the full viewership impact of dropping the "2" right here ➡️ https://buff.ly/EW8LZF3

🌌 Galaxies Spring Showcase 2026: One Giant Leap in Viewership 🚀 Last night's Galaxies Spring Showcase was the third edition of the twice-yearly independent game showcase. Over 50 games were featured across 7 world premieres and announcements from 40+ studios, from Bandai Namco to one-person indie operations. A whole universe of games in an hour 🪐 Viewership saw a huge step up from last year's inaugural Galaxies Showcase. Hours watched hit 131K (+285% YoY), average viewership reached 81.1K (+167% YoY), and peak viewership hit 108K (+167% YoY). In just one year, this showcase has reached and entirely new orbit. A big part of that leap is the co-streaming strategy. 69.9% of all viewership came from co-streamers rather than the official Galaxies channel, with the top 5 alone generating 41.1K hours watched between them (just over 30% of all hours watched). Leading the co-streamers was FlashForce at 12.8K average viewers, an official Phasmophobia content creator. Kinetic Games made a special Phasmophobia announcement (Alan Wake 2 crossover 🫨) at the showcase and offered exclusive Twitch Drops, bringing in FlashForce's dedicated audience 👻 Close behind was forsen at 8.8K, the veteran Swedish variety streamer with 1.7M+ Twitch followers and one of Twitch's most iconic (and chaotic) communities. Rounding out the top 5 were Olivia Monroe at 8.1K (an independent English VTuber), Xop0 at 6.9K, and twigbot_ at 4.5K. One odd trend here: A lot of horror and horror-adjacent stuff going on this year! Phasmophobia, ReVamp, Glasshouse, and Directive 8020 gave the event a distinctly spooky flavor 🧛 Could be a good time to brush up on how horror titles perform on live streaming more broadly ➡️ https://buff.ly/RJX7ZJ8

🏍️ Ludwig and Michael Reeves Ride 3,000 Miles Across China... With No Maps 🗺️ And no highways. No Phones. No Translators. All the way from the South China Sea to the Mongolian border, Ludwig and Michael Reeves completed their second màoxiǎn (冒险). That's "màoxiǎn", though Ludwig spent most of the trip accidentally calling it "cat line" (māoxiàn) 🐱 Across 16 chapters, Tip2Tip China pulled in 23.7M views across the cumulative first 7 days per chapter. This is 3.5M more than last year's Tip2Tip Japan, buttttt Japan ran 14 chapters and China ran 16. Basically, the average viewership works out to be almost identical ⚖️ Chapter 1 led the series with 2.7M views and a 50% first-day rate: The lowest of any chapter, suggesting strong algorithmic discovery that pulled in viewers beyond Lud's core audience all week long. The series then settled into a remarkably consistent mid-run rhythm, with Chapters 6-16 sitting in a tight 1.1M–1.4M band. For a daily series running over two weeks, that kind of retention is impressive and shows viewers loved what Ludwig and Michael were doing. There was one chapter that broke that pattern: Chapter 5 spiked back to 1.6M with a 62% first-day rate, reversing a slight dip from Chapters 3 and 4. It's a little embarrassing why though... Day 5 was when Ludwig and Michael stumbled into a rural funeral thinking it was a party and asking for food. What could have ended in disaster turned into a heartwarming moment as a local man, dubbed by the community as "Dawg Li", extended his extraordinary generosity despite their faux pas ❤️ With per-chapter performance matching Tip2Tip Japan almost exactly and exciting organic moments like this, it looks like Tip2Tip is shaping up to become an annual tradition for Ludwig. Creators are constantly finding exciting new ways to connect with their audience and the wider world. And you can connect with them as well: Just check out how easy it is right here ➡️ https://buff.ly/uXlFLBo