Ibai Llanos has once again obliterated the Twitch viewership record.
Spanish streamer Ibai hit an incredible 3.85 million concurrent viewers on Twitch during the fourth edition of his La Velada streaming event, which was held at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid to a sold out crowd. It hosted six boxing fights featuring content creators, as well as musical performances from the likes of Bad Boys star Will Smith, Bizarrap, and Young Miko.
“Madre mía, this Velada was absolutely insane!” Ibai commented. “The level of boxing, the music, the energy... it was beyond anything we could have imagined. We made history together!"
Ibai’s latest milestone is a rare positive headline for Twitch, which in recent months has endured a torrid time with a number of crises hitting the platform. Chief among them is revelations around former Twitch streamer Guy Beahm, aka Dr Disrespect, who was banned from the platform in 2020 for sending sexually explicit messages to a minor. Twitch has so far failed to comment on these revelations, despite multiple requests for comment.
Twitch also recently banned Call of Duty streamer Nick Kolcheff, aka Nickmercs, after he used derogatory language live on stream.
In January, Twitch announced plans to cut about 35% of staff on top of 400 layoffs last year. CEO Dan Clancy said "we still have work to do to rightsize our company.” Clancy later added that despite cost-cutting throughout 2023, Twitch "is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business." In 2023, Twitch paid out over $1 billion to streamers, Clancy confirmed. "So while the Twitch business remains strong, for some time now the organization has been sized based upon where we optimistically expect our business to be in three or more years, not where we’re at today.
"As with many other companies in the tech space, we are now sizing our organization based upon the current scale of our business and conservative predictions of how we expect to grow in the future."
Dichosos los oídos de aquellos que pueden escuchar a Will Smith cantar la intro del principe de bel air en vivo pic.twitter.com/qvbo2a2Cvv
— kika (@doblasftcheetos) July 13, 2024
Speaking in a follow-up livestream, Clancy said Twitch parent company Amazon had propped up the broadcaster as it remains unprofitable.
“I’ll be blunt: we aren’t profitable at this point,” Clancy said. “Amazon has been extremely supportive of Twitch. Big thing for being sustainable over time is ensuring we don’t lose money. That’s a big part of my job because that’s going to be what makes sure we can be here for the long term.”
Twitch has suffered pressure from rivals such as Kick, which has snapped up popular streamers in huge deals. Last year, Twitch streamer xQC, aka Félix Lengyel, signed a massive multi-year deal with Kick reportedly worth around $100 million.
Clancy said Twitch was no longer in the business of offering big-money deals to streamers, insisting the economics do not make sense. “The cost of retaining those streamers would have been far more than the revenue generated from them,” he said. “That is something we’ve been very clear about. We don’t want to do that.”
Image credit: Twitch
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
