Mixer still has a long way to go until it becomes a household name, despite being owned by software heavyweight, Microsoft. But it is enjoying a growth spurt, thanks to the flow-on effects of Ninja’s arrival. So just how popular is Mixer now? Is it a challenger to Twitch’s live-streaming title, or is it a flash in the pan? We have looked at some recent Mixer stats, and have a good idea of how successful Mixer now is, and where it is likely to head in the foreseeable future.
14 Mixer Stats Showing That it is a Platform on the Rise:
Hours Spent Watching Mixer Content Have Grown 17x Since May 2017
Mixer began life in January 2016 as a live streaming platform called Beam. However, Microsoft purchased Beam and relaunched it as Mixer in May 2017, so we can look at that date as the beginning of Mixer as we know it. Mixer has expanded rapidly since then, and it now averages 17x as many viewers as it did then. This works out to an average increase in viewing of 12% per month – although, in reality, the growth hasn’t been linear. There was a massive surge in interest upon the arrival of Ninja. Numbers have continued to rise since then, with another recent boost with the advent of Shroud.
Mixer Downloads Doubled After Ninja Moved There
Ninja’s defection to Mixer was, without doubt, the pivotal moment in Mixer’s history. Many gaming fans would most likely not have heard of Mixer, until Ninja announced his departure from Twitch. Although Ninja still has some way to go to build his popularity up to its old level, he nonetheless attracted many followers to Mixer. Soon after Ninja’s announcement, there was a considerable spike in downloads, with a doubling in the number of new installs on August 1 2019. Ninja certainly helped things by talking about his impending transfer before his move.
Mixer Spiked to be the #1 Non-Game App in the Apple Store After Arrival of Ninja
At one point during the Ninja transfer process, there were so many downloads of Mixer that the live-streaming app reached the #1 free non-gaming spot in Apple’s app store. Before this, Mixer held position #750. Although it didn’t reach the same coveted spot in the Android store, it shows the difference that one person can make to the success of a venture. Wooing Ninja clearly cost Microsoft a tidy sum; however, it appears that he more than made up for this in the additional business that he brought to the platform.
Ninja Claims 1,000,000 Subscribers
Ninja has tweeted that he now has 1,000,000 new subscribers on Mixer – helped by subscriptions being free for anybody to claim until September 30. This compares to the 250,000 subscribers that he had on Twitch, although people had to pay for subscriptions there.
Mixer is Now the Second Most Popular Streaming Platform
Mixer has recently overtaken YouTube Gaming to be the second most preferred website for streamers. Mixer benefited from a 188 percent increase in total hours streamed during Q3 2019, rising from 11.3 million to 32.6 million.
There are 3.1 Viewers for Every Live Channel on Mixer
There has been a burst of new channels pop up on Mixer since Ninja signed up. Numbers rose from1.96 million unique channels in Q2 2019 to 3.92 million in Q3 2019. The problem is that most of these new channels are still very small, with very few viewers. Allied with this, the total number of hours watched on Mixer dropped by 10.6% between the two quarters. It is important to note that while the number of hours watched fell in Q3, the number of hours streamed rose (and overtook YouTube Gaming). This, allied with Ninja’s high percentage of viewership, meant that the average number of viewers per stream dropped to just 3.1 viewers per channel. There must have been many people only broadcasting to themselves. Mixer is making good progress at attracting popular streamers, and they are building up the content that they hope will attract viewers. However, although #2 in terms of streamers, they are still #3 for viewing hours.
The First Ninja Stream on Mixer Attracted 2.2 Million People
Ninja’s first Mixer stream attracted 2.2 million viewers, over the 8.5 hours of his broadcast. On average, he had 61,574 people watching at any time, and he peaked with 85,876 viewers. This was more than 50% of the entire Mixer audience at the time.In fact, 86% of Ninja’s viewers claim to have come to Mixer with the sole aim of watching his stream. As a comparison, typical figures for Ninja during his later days at Twitch were an average of 420,000 unique viewers per stream, with 41,000 watching concurrently on average. His July 2019 viewing peaked at 163,709 during a Fortnite event on July 20.
Ninja Now Has 2.5 Million Mixer Followers
At the time of writing, Ninja had 2,499,088 followers on Mixer. He will undoubtedly exceed 2.5 million shortly, maybe even by the time this post is published.
TheGrefg is the Second Most Popular Mixer Streamer
Despite the recent arrival of Shroud to Mixer, the #2 streamer on the platform is still TheGrefg, with 821,678 followers, and total views to date of 54,275,811.
More Than 1/3 of Mixer’s Visitors Come from the USA
Alexa estimates the location of a website’s audience. In Mixer’s case, they calculate that 38.5% of Mixer’s visitors over the last 30 days came from the United States. Other countries where Mixer is popular include the United Kingdom (11.0%) and Germany (8.2%). Interestingly, SimilarWeb has different estimates of the geographical popularity of Mixer as a website. They consider 32.44% if Mixer’s viewers to come from the United States, followed by 10.09% Brazil, 7.01% the United Kingdom, 3.81% Mexico, and 3.81% Canada.
Twitter Sends Nearly Half Mixer’s Social Traffic
Although SimilarWeb believes that Mixer gains the bulk (72.75%) of its traffic from direct sources, it says 8.17% of its traffic comes from social. The high direct number is probably not surprising. These will be regular Mixer fans returning night after night. When it comes to social traffic, Twitter is by far the most important source (at 47.67%). The next highest source of social traffic is YouTube at 35.02%, with nowhere else sending greater than 10%.
Mixer Ranks 1265 in the World for Internet Traffic and Engagement
The global ranking company, Alexa, gives Mixer a rating of 1,265 in terms of global internet engagement. This is Alexa’s estimate of the site’s popularity over the last 90 days. They calculate their rank by using a combination of average daily visitors to the site and pageviews on this site over the past three months. The site had an Alexa Ranking of 2,662 on July 31. It then rose rapidly after Ninja’s arrival, reaching 1,710 by August 15. The growth since then has been steadier, but there is still a clear upward trend.
Mixer Users are 2.3x More Likely to Visit Gaming Websites Than the Average Internet User
In what is perhaps the least surprising statistic on this list, Alexa has determined that 96% of Mixer’s visitors also visit websites in the Gaming category. This means that Alexa considers these people 2.3 times more likely to visit gaming websites compared to typical internet users. Alexa also notices a strong correlation between people who visit Mixer and those who visit Twitch, Xbox, and SreamLabs. Interestingly, the second most popular internet surfing category for Mixer’s followers is Photos. 80% of the people who visit Mixer also go to sites featuring photos, such as Imgur, Instagram, and Giphy. They are twice as likely to visit photo sites as typical internet users are.
Shroud Has Attracted 42.9% of Viewers in his First Few Days at Mixer
While we were writing this post, a second prominent streamer jumped ship from Twitch to Mixer. Shroud announced the move on October 24, with his first live stream being at 8 pm ET that day. This caused a massive spike in Mixer viewing figures on October 24-25, meaning that for 14 days (most of which predated Shroud’s arrival), 42.9% of total viewers watched Shroud, 14.2% watched Ninja, and the remaining 42.9% watched everybody else on the platform. Shroud has had an average of 35,951 concurrent viewers for each of the 16.7 hours he has broadcast to date, totaling 1,776,659. Shroud still has a long way to go to catch up with Ninja’s following, however, with only 342, 239 followers so far.
Sources for These Stats
Mediakix, Alexa, Sensor Tower, Mixer.TwitchTracker, Social Blade, SimilarWeb, Dexerto, Dot Esports
