Updated Mar 17, 2026 by Stream Hatchet
Report · January 1, 2025
Published by Stream Hatchet
The analysis evaluates live‑streaming activity for fighting games worldwide, concentrating on the period from July 2024 through June 2025 and tracking quarterly trends back to Q1 2019. By aggregating data from Twitch, YouTube Gaming and other platforms, the study isolates titles that generated at least 100 000 hours watched in the preceding twelve months, yielding a focus on 28 arcade‑fighter franchises and the most active streamers across multiple regions. Street Fighter 6 emerges as the clear market leader, delivering 204 million hours watched and representing roughly 71 % of total fighting‑genre viewership. Since its launch, the title adds an average of 40 million hours each quarter, outpacing legacy champions such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which historically hovered around 10 million hours per quarter. Platform fighters like Super Smash Bros. and Brawlhalla alternate in the top‑five positions, while newer anime‑styled entries such as Bleach: Rebirth of Souls sustain modest but steady audiences. YouTube’s share of fighting‑game streams now exceeds one‑quarter of all quarterly viewership, driven largely by Japanese VTubers and streamers. Streamer analysis shows Japanese personalities dominate the arcade‑fighter space, with fps_shaka leading at 6.4 million hours watched, followed closely by VTuber Kuzuha (6.3 million) and other Japanese pros. Western contributors remain significant; Maximilian_DOOD ranks fifth with 5 million hours and distinguishes himself by covering at least eight different arcade fighters, totaling 24 titles. The data set excludes any streamer who has not met a 1 000‑hour threshold per game, ensuring a focus on sustained engagement. Esports events reinforce the genre’s appeal, with EVO and EVO Japan generating the highest peak‑viewer counts—up to 377 thousand concurrent viewers. Street
THE FIGHTINGGENRE ON LIVE STREAMING GHTING OUARTERLY HOURS Q12019 GENRE VIEWERSHIP BY WATCHED - Q2 20 Twitch YouTube Gaming Others Twitch YouTube Gaming Others 140M 140M 120M Street Fighter 6 Releases 120M 6% 100M 6% 100M Multiversus Releases 26% 80M 26% 80M 60M 60M 40M 40M 68% 68% 20M 20M Q1 ‘19 Q1 ‘20 Q1 ‘21 Q1 ‘22 Q1 ‘23 Q1 ‘24 Q1 ‘25 Q1 ‘19 Q1 ‘20 Q1 ‘21 Q1 ‘22 Q1 ‘23 Q1 ‘24 Q1 ‘25
FIGHTING GENRE POPULARITY Street Fighter 6 is stepping up Fighting Game demand. Since release, it’s added a healthy 40M hours watched every single quarter Prior to SF6 releasing, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate led every quarter with upwards of 10M hours watched. Fellow Platform Fighter MultiVersus made a splash, but petered out YouTube Fighting viewership is growing. It now accounts for over 1/4 of all quarterly viewership thanks to Japanese streamers and VTubers T STREAM
TO BE NO. 1 ACROSS ALL OF LIVE STREAMING THLY RANKS* FOR THE TOP FIGHTING GAMES BY HOURS WATCHED | JUL 2O24 - JUN Street Fighter 6 Tekken 8 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Street Fighter 6 Tekken 8 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Bleach: Rebirth of Souls Brawlhalla Super Smash Bros. Melee Bleach: Rebirth of Souls Brawlhalla Super Smash Bros. Melee #1 #1 #3 #3 #5 #5 #7 #7 #9 #9 #11 #11 AUG ‘24 OCT ‘24 DEC ‘24 FEB ‘25 APR ‘25 JUN ‘25 AUG ‘24 OCT ‘24 DEC ‘24 FEB ‘25 APR ‘25 JUN ‘25 T STREAM
TOP FIGHIING GAMES Street Fighter 6 reigns supreme. Even 2 years since release, Capcom’s Fighter holds the #1 spot every single month Platform Fighters Super Smash Bros. and Brawlhalla keep trading top spots, attracting viewers with party game appeal Bleach: Rebirth of Souls has kept viewers engaged since its release in March, unlike many Anime Arena Fighters that typically fade away after initial hype T STREAM
LIVE STREAMING VIEWERSHIP METRICS FOR ARCADEFIGHTERS &THE TOP ARCADE FIGHTERS BY HOURS JUL 2024 - JUN 2025 | ALL PLATFORMS ARCADE FIGHTER KEY METRICS ARCADE FIGHTER KEY METRICS 204M 34M W/ PROPORTION OF TOTAL W/ PROPORTION OF TOTAL FIGHTING GENRE VIEWERSHIP* FIGHTING GENRE VIEWERSHIP* 273M 273M Fighters Fighters 29% Tekken 8 HOURS HOURS WATCHED WATCHED Other Other 5.5M Street Fighter 6 5.5M 71% Tekken 8 71% AIRTIME AIRTIME Fighters 8.2M 5M 4.3M HOURS Fighters 8.2M 5M HOURS Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Fatal Fury: CotW 24K Fatal Fury: CotW 24K Arcade Mortal Kombat 1 1.6M Arcade Guilty Gear -Strive- 2.6M 2.6M Marvel vs. Capcom… UNIQUE Street Fighter 6** 2XKO Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 UNIQUE Guilty Gear Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 CHANNELS Street Fighter 6** Mortal Kombat 1 -Strive- 1.2M CHANNELS 2XKO Dragon Ball FighterZ 1.2M Dragon Ball FighterZ CWr * Analysis here only includes Fighting Games with >100K * * Street Fighter 6's section of this chart has been shrunk * Analysis here only includes Fighting Games with >100K * * Street Fighter 6's section of this chart has been shrunk
ARCADE FIGHIERS We restricted the field of Fighting Games to titles with >100K hours watched in the last 12 months and looked at Arcade Fighters (2D & 3D) In this sample, Arcade Fighters carried the Fighting Genre by accounting for 71% of all viewership (for 40 Arcade Fighters vs. 37 Other Fighters) However! The bulk of this viewership is Street Fighter 6 at 204M hours watched. Younger franchises pulled in <5M hours watched
The global live-streaming landscape underwent a transformative shift in the third quarter of 2025, characterized by record-breaking viewership and a significant redistribution of market power. Total viewership reached 9.6 billion hours across traditional platforms, representing a 13% year-over-year increase. However, the most profound development was the emergence of TikTok Live as a dominant force, recording 9.1 billion hours watched and nearly doubling the output of Twitch. This surge reflects a broader consumer pivot toward mobile-integrated content and has resulted in Twitch’s market share falling below 50% for the first time, a decline exacerbated by aggressive internal crackdowns on fraudulent viewbotting. Content trends during this period favored non-gaming categories and massive live events over traditional gameplay. Non-gaming content led with 1.7 billion hours watched, while Ibai’s *La Velada del Año V* set a new industry benchmark with 9.2 million peak concurrent viewers. Although esports viewership grew by 8% to 805 million hours, the sector saw a notable migration of audiences from Twitch toward YouTube and TikTok, largely driven by the Esports World Cup. In the gaming sector, *EA Sports FC 26* emerged as the quarter's premier release, generating 62.3 million hours watched within its first month. Individual creator performance and brand integration reached new heights of commercial impact. Kai Cenat dominated the landscape, leading all creators with 91.4 million hours watched and setting a record with 1.1 million subscriptions during his "Mafiathon 3" event. This level of engagement translated into significant brand visibility, as evidenced by a 26,000-mention surge for Crocs during Cenat’s broadcast. While female viewership was led by ExtraEmily and the VTuber category saw Usada Pekora reclaim the top spot, the overarching trend indicates that high-production marathons and cross-platform accessibility are now the primary drivers of growth and monetization in the streaming economy.
This analysis explores the landscape of shooter games on live streaming platforms from 2019 through 2025, tracking viewership trends, subgenre shifts, and the impact of esports. While shooters remain a cornerstone of the industry—consistently accounting for at least 20% of all gaming viewership—the genre has seen a 6% decline in market share since 2022. By 2024, shooters represented approximately one-in-five gaming hours watched, totaling 6.1 billion hours. The data reveals a significant transition in subgenre dominance. Tactical shooters overtook battle royale games in 2023 to become the most-watched subgenre. This shift is largely driven by the sustained popularity of Valorant and Counter-Strike, which together claim 90% of tactical shooter viewership. Conversely, the battle royale subgenre has seen its viewership halve since its 2020 peak, despite the continued popularity of Fortnite. Other segments, such as extraction and arena shooters, have maintained stable but smaller market shares, with Escape From Tarkov accounting for nearly two-thirds of all extraction shooter hours. Esports serves as a primary engine for the genre's visibility. By late 2025, nearly half of all Counter-Strike viewership was generated by esports events. Valorant maintains a balanced global presence, holding significant viewership shares across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Southern Hemisphere. In contrast, Counter-Strike remains heavily reliant on the European market, while PUBG Mobile dominates the mobile-centric Asian market. The analysis also highlights the influence of individual creators and variety streamers. In 2024, Gaules emerged as the leading shooter streamer with 79.2 million hours watched. While Twitch remains the dominant platform for top creators, accounting for 73% of the top ten's viewership, the data shows high viewer overlap between franchises. For example, over 40% of Valorant viewers also engage with other tactical shooters, suggesting strong community fluidity across the genre. Methodology for these findings includes data aggregation from all major streaming platforms, excluding TikTok Live, with specific sentiment analysis conducted on Twitch chat data.
The global live streaming market entered a period of stabilization in 2023, reaching 38.3 billion hours watched with the lowest volatility recorded since 2020. While the industry leader, Twitch, experienced a 4.9% decline in total hours watched, the broader landscape remained dynamic due to the 11% growth of YouTube Gaming and the rapid ascent of Kick. Within its first year, Kick secured the position of the third-largest Western streaming platform, displacing Facebook and hosting nearly one million unique channels. This shift reflects a diversifying market where platform loyalty is increasingly challenged by new entrants and multi-platform simulcasting, the latter of which has been shown to increase creator audiences by an average of 100%. Esports remains a primary engine for engagement, with viewership rising 9% year-over-year to 2.5 billion hours. This growth is heavily supported by the rise of co-streaming, which now accounts for nearly 30% of total esports consumption. While First-Person Shooters remain the dominant gaming genre at 4.7 billion hours, non-gaming categories such as "Just Chatting" and "Sports" are expanding their market share. Notable content trends include the continued rise of VTubers on YouTube and significant regional growth in Japan, where Twitch viewership increased by 283 million hours. Demographic and geographic shifts further define the current landscape. Kick has established a predominantly English-speaking base and shows a slightly higher representation of top female creators compared to its competitors. Meanwhile, Europe saw a massive 400% surge in Battle Royale esports viewership driven by major international championships. As the industry matures, the integration of sophisticated analytics and marketing ecosystems allows stakeholders to navigate a complex environment where traditional gaming content, creator-led events, and diverse language markets intersect to maintain high levels of global engagement.
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