Creator Streams Made Up 46.7% of Esports Watch Time

Community co-casts accounted for 46.7% of watch time across major esports in the first half of 2026, based on estimates for titles with more than 10 million Hours Watched. The split between official tournament channels and independent creator streams varied by game and by language market.

Counter-Strike showed a roughly even division between official broadcasts and independent co-streams. League of Legends, Dota 2 and Rocket League saw co-casters draw larger audiences in many markets while official streams retained substantial viewing. Tournaments for Call of Duty, Fortnite, Apex Legends and Valorant were predominantly consumed through creator channels, with community broadcasts capturing nearly all watch time for those events.

Major mobile esports followed a different pattern. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Arena of Valor and Battlegrounds Mobile India maintained audiences that primarily watched official streams, which continued to act as the main viewing option for those communities.

Language and regional habits influenced viewing patterns. English was the largest language group in the dataset, and official English broadcasts captured the majority of English-language watch time in part because international tournaments routinely offer an English feed as the default global option. Indonesian, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Hindi audiences skewed toward official channels, particularly for mobile titles.

Other markets favored creators. Russian viewers concentrated on a small number of Counter-Strike and Dota 2 co-streamers. Spanish-language audiences preferred personality-driven streams to tournament feeds. Turkish and German viewers also showed a strong preference for independent casters. Korean, Portuguese, Japanese and French markets used a hybrid model in which both official broadcasts and independent creators attracted significant audiences.

Viewing was concentrated among a small set of creators. The top 15 co-streamers logged more than 216 million Hours Watched in H1 2026, equal to 27.9% of all community-stream watch time across the tracked games. Marc “Caedrel” Lamont led the list by a substantial margin. Several Russian-language creators, including Ivan “StRoGo” Shurpatov, Roman “RAMZES” Kushnarev and Igor “SL4M” Sopov, were among the highest-ranking channels. League of Legends appeared most often among the top creators; Counter-Strike’s community audience was distributed across multiple high-volume streamers.

Co-streaming appeared across multiple platforms. Twitch hosted many top creators, while YouTube, Soop and a South Korean platform, HZZK, also hosted leading co-streams.

Rights holders, publishers and sponsors faced a split audience across official and creator channels. Organizers needed audience measurement that covered both types of streams, and commercial partners sought ways to place sponsorships and reach viewers who watched through independent creators rather than the main broadcast.