Reports
2025 YouTube Gaming Trends Report
Explore the Data Shaping the Future of YouTube’s Gaming Ecosystem
Our 2025 YouTube Gaming Trends Report offers a detailed look at the platform’s outstanding year. It covers everything from market share growth and regional strongholds to the rise of short-form content and the comeback of sponsored streams. Whether you are forming creator partnerships, evaluating regional opportunities, or checking the impact of esports, this report gives you the insights you need to succeed in 2026.
What You'll Discover
Record-Breaking Industry Growth
YouTube Gaming reached a record 8.8B hours watched in 2025. This marks a 12% increase from the previous year, showing the platform’s ongoing growth and its ability to set new viewership records.
Expanding Market Share
Learn how YouTube Gaming is taking a bigger share of the live-streaming market:
- YouTube Gaming now accounts for nearly 1-in-4 hours (24%) of all live-streaming gaming watched across all live-streaming gaming platforms.
- Since 2018, the platform’s market share has grown from 19% to 24%, demonstrating steady growth.
- In 2025 alone, YTG registered 1.2B hours of dedicated esports viewership.
Global Creator & Content Diversity
Discover the regions and formats driving the most engagement:
- Japan leads in global viewership, with top Japanese channels totalling 451M hours watched in 2025.
- YouTube Shorts peaked at 6M gaming-related posts in August 2025, as creators increasingly turn to short-form content to direct audiences to live streams.
- The VTuber landscape is thriving; VTuber agency Hololive makes up half of the Top 10 VTuber channels, totaling over 150M hours watched.
The Return of Sponsored Content
Data shows a significant comeback of sponsored content, with viewership of streams containing #ad in the title reaching 4.5M hours in Q4 2025 (the highest level seen since 2020!)
How This Report Helps you
- Actionable Insights for Global Strategy: Understand regional differences, like the high engagement in South Asia, where India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand added up to 472M hours watched.
- Compare Creator Performance: Measure top talents like IShowSpeed, who led the platform with 68.5M hours watched, against new VTuber and variety trends.
- Inform Decisions with Detailed Demographics: Use reliable data on age and income, showing that 56% of top-channel viewers are from the US, Japan, or Brazil, to focus your campaigns on the right audience.
Expert Strategy. Winning Campaigns. Scalable Results.
Partner with Stream Hatchet for the expert support and tracking you need to lead the market.
