The Game Awards has broken its 2024 viewership record, bringing in roughly 171m livestream broadcasts earlier this month. This is an increase of 17m views compared to last year’s show.
Via a report by Variety, this 11 percent rise in viewers does not take into account those checking out the show on Amazon Prime Video, which offered a platform for the awards show for the first time this year. What views can be measured stem from YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram Live, as well as regional streaming services in China and India.
According to Streamcharts, Western platforms saw a 9 percent increase from last year’s show, to a peak concurrent figure of 4.4 million live viewers. This record breaking figure is reflected on platform-specific milestones too, with YouTube and Twitch seeing significant leaps from last year’s viewership statistics.
Co-streaming also saw an increase on Twitch, with 16,500 streamers on the platform experiencing the show alongside their fans. This was an astounding 50 percent increase from last year’s figure, further cementing the show as an annual keystone within the games industry.
To compare, The Oscars (which still remains a television broadcast due to a deal with ABC) only had 19.7 million viewers this year. With that show looking to jump to YouTube in 2029 when their current broadcasting deal expires, for now at least the event, which has clearly inspired The Game Awards to an extent, seems to have been overshadowed in terms of pure eyeballs-on-screen statistics. Cultural influence is of course a whole other discussion altogether.
Why does The Game Awards see increasing views year-on-year? Well, there’s all the reveal trailers announced at The Game Awards which continue to draw eyes even from those generally uninterested in the awards themselves. For those more invested, talk around an Expedition 33 sweep was a real discussion-driver, as the French RPG took home a whopping nine awards in total from the Peacock Theatre.