BY: Daniel Howley
Seven days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day for two years straight. That’s how often 31-year old Ben Bowman, a professional streamer, livestreamed video games on Amazon’s (AMZN) Twitch from 2013 to 2015. Today, with an audience of more than 640,000 followers, Bowman has cut back on his streaming … to six days a week.
It turns out, streaming video games for a living isn’t all fun and, well, games. And the medium, which is supported by heavyweights like Twitch, Google’s (GOOG, GOOGL) YouTube Gaming and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Mixer is only growing.
According to Lewis Ward, research director for gaming and augmented and virtual reality at Gartner, Inc., a third of mobile gamers said they have created video or livestreamed content in the past month. And that doesn’t take into account the huge number of streamers on consoles and PCs.
The demand justifies this supply. According to a recent survey conducted by Piper Jaffray, 61% of teenagers said they watch other people play video games on YouTube, Twitch or other sites.
But becoming a successful streamer is incredibly difficult, time consuming and, for most people, just about impossible.
Living off of a game
According to Ward, the number of streamers who can support themselves by streaming is in the hundreds worldwide. “That’s out of a gamer base of over a billion people globally,” he said.
Top streamers can earn anywhere from thousands to millions of dollars a year in subscription fees, tips and sponsorships from gaming peripheral makers. Of course, becoming one of the lucky few who make millions isn’t easy.
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