The appetite for live-streaming is bigger than ever

It would be easy to assume that because competition is so stiff among live-streaming platforms — for talent, for eyeballs — that the market is zero-sum. But as it turns out, that isn’t actually true.

According to a fourth-quarter report from the streaming tools provider StreamElements and the metrics tracker Arsenal.gg, the entire industry grew an astonishing 12 percent in the last year (based on hours watched). A lot of growth came from Facebook Gaming, which increased its hours watched by a full 210 percent — most likely from its signing of new streamers. According to the StreamElements report, Facebook had a 6 percent increase in streamers and a whopping 78 percent increase in the average number of viewers per hours streamed.

While...

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