People tend to pit sports and video game viewership against one another as forms of entertainment, a relic of an era where sports were for “jocks” and video games were for “nerds”. Naturally, live streaming culture tends to fall on the side of video games, having developed alongside the popularity of Starcraft esports in South Korea. As a result, much of the discourse around live streaming and esports popularity tends to view it as being mutually exclusive from traditional sports broadcasting.
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However, a growing number of viewers are turning to live-streaming platforms for their sports fix, whether that be live events covered by co-streamers, or fascinating new hybrids between live streaming culture and sports tournaments. In this article, we’re looking at the most popular sports events, streamers, and video games in 2024 to see how traditional sports is pervading the global live streaming scene. For more trends like this, check out our Save Point 2024 report.
Sports Events Find New Audiences via Live Streaming
The most popular sporting events in 2024 revolved around two sports: Martial arts and football (soccer). WestCOL’s Stream Fighters 3 event brought in the highest peak viewership of any sports-related event last year at 1.4M, continuing the fad of streamers duking it out for live-streaming audiences. Both the #2 and #4 events followed a similar pattern, those being rebeudeter’s DTR Fight in France (1.2M peak viewers) and radio station Vorterix’s Párense de Manos in Argentina (696K peak viewers). These “creator clashes” seem to grab viewer attention as the usual online banter is sorted out in the ring.
Apart from streamer fights, however, Ibai’s Kings League and its associated events dominate the sports event streaming landscape. 6 of the top 10 sports events by peak viewership in 2024 were related to the Kings League, with the Kings World Cup hitting a peak viewership of 1.2M. By branching out into women’s football (Queens League) and children’s football (Prince Cup), and creating both national and international editions of the streamer-driven football competition, Ibai Llanos and Gerard Piqué have formed a nearly full year of content for fans.
This pattern has continued into 2025, with the recently completed Kings World Cup Nations hitting a peak viewership of 3.4M. Again, each of the 16 nations’ teams were chaired by a streaming personality, and Ibai was directly involved in the organization of the tournament. Taking La Velada del Año and Kings World Cup Nations together, Ibai is responsible for the two most popular events on live streaming. This may be due to the streaming personalities featured in each competition, but still; the sheer gap between Ibai and other streamers trying to organize similar events is immense. Given the upward trajectory of Kings League-associated events, we can expect ever higher viewing numbers in 2025.
Streamers Carve Out Their Own Niche by Purely Focusing on Sports
Given the popularity of sports worldwide, it’s not surprising that many creators almost solely cover sports content on their channels. Among streamers for whom sports is their primary category, DjMaRiiO had the highest viewership in 2024 with 14.1M hours watched. While a significant amount of this viewership did come from DjMaRiiO’s coverage of Kings League-associated events, his highest viewing numbers actually came from his own football/streamer crossover event: Partidiazo de YouTubers 5. Clearly, there are plenty of streamers trying to capitalize on the creator-led event craze.
Beyond DJMaRiiO, many of the other most watched sports streamers were either Spanish or Brazilian, including journalist Gerard Romero in second place (10.3M hours watched) and Kings League participant oestagiario in third place (9M hours watched). The only exceptions to this rule in the top 10 were Taiwanese baseball club brothers_baseball and Maltese football player kurt0411. The baseball channel is a very interesting outlier, being the only Eastern channel to find such success with sports streaming and representing an otherwise less popular sport. It’s possible that baseball could continue to grow in popularity on live streaming as more teams share behind-the-scenes vlogs and content.
The Love of Sports Extends Out into Video Game Culture
Naturally, this popularity of sports content bleeds over into video game streaming as well. Football again proved to be the most popular sport in this format, with EA Sports FC 24 and EA Sports FC 25 collectively pulling in 359M hours watched. This number far outweighs every other competitor in the space – even the football/driving hybrid Rocket League at 98M hours watched. Notably, other major American sports like basketball and American football also perform well, proving a strong correlation between live streaming popularity and sales figures in the sports genre.
Sports games also had an incredible year in terms of game launches. EA Sports FC 25 had 67.4M hours watched in its first 30 days, while EA Sports College Football 25 surprised audiences with an airtime of 1.6M hours in its first 30 days – that makes it the 10th most streamed game on launch for 2024. While critics of the genre pan how minor the updates made between yearly editions can be, it’s exactly this minutiae that captivates fans of the genre. Everything from new player rosters to slight tweaks to player stats can be scrutinized, and where better to find an informed opinion on these changes than with pro streamers?
Sports, both traditional and gaming, thrive on discourse: Rallying behind favourite players, arguing over calls, and proving one’s awareness of the game. Live streaming is the best format for facilitating these discussions, like a virtual sports bar. In this way, sports bridge the gap between traditional entertainment and live streaming. As athletes turn towards being influencers and vice versa, the traditionally video game-dominated live streaming space opens itself up to a whole new audience. And now in 2025, the Esports World Cup will even fall under the banner of the Olympics. Stream Hatchet will be watching as sports of all forms and codes find their way onto live-streaming platforms in the coming years.
To keep up to date with the latest big events on live-streaming platforms, follow Stream Hatchet:
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