The debate between US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden caught the attention of Twitch users – several top streamers at once like Matthew Mizkif Rinaudo and Felix xQc Lengyel launched a rebroadcast of the performance and gathered an audience of several hundred thousand viewers at the screens. Approximately the same peak online can be seen at the Dota 2 and CS: GO majors.
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The New York Times writes that Twitch streamers managed to make interesting content out of the debate that would never have been shown on television. During the broadcast, they allowed themselves harsh words about the candidates, discussed the theses made with the audience and criticized the debate moderator. At the same time, some streamers directly said that they did not understand politics at all – they perceived the debates as talk shows, and Trump and Biden were compared to YouTube bloggers.
What about the numbers?
Although the debates of the US presidential candidates gathered a very large audience on Twitch, it cannot be said that they surpassed eSports in popularity on this platform. Top streamers like Shroud T-shirt Grzesik and Tyler Ninja Blevins more than once they gathered 100 thousand or more people at the screens at the same time. Other examples include Guy DrDisRespect Beim – after the ban on Twitch, the reasons for which the parties have not yet been disclosed, he spent several weeks inactive. After that, Baim shocked fans with a stream on YouTube – the splash screen of his stream alone attracted the attention of almost half a million people.
If we talk about the peak audience of debates, taking into account the TV viewers, then even the largest esports tournaments cannot yet match it. For example matches The International 2019 Dota 2 was simultaneously watched by 1.9 million people excluding viewers from China. Slightly better indicator 2019 World Championship League of Legends – 3.9 million viewers at its peak. All of this is not even close to the 68 million viewers of the debate.
Twitch as a political platform
Politicians recently started using Twitch to communicate with audiences. For example, in February 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron selected a streaming platform to debate with Yellow Vest movement activists. In addition to the president, several government officials also spoke at the broadcast, including the prime minister, ministers of culture and education, and others.
In September 2023, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was a guest of the popular New Zealand streamer Broxh and actively communicated with his viewers for two hours. Several American politicians, including Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, also have channels on Twitch, but they are usually used not for personal streams, but for relaying campaign speeches from meetings with voters.
