Predicting the financial and viewership success of livestreamers

ABSTRACT

Through three studies, this paper examines the success of livestreamers, as a function of presentation style (e.g. with or without webcam) triggering parasocial interactions. First, a content analysis confirms that successful livestreamers use voice/webcam features, and those features correlate with increased viewers and followers. Then, an experiment shows that viewers who can hear/see the livestreamer’s voice/webcam report more enjoyment of and support for the livestreamer. Finally, another content analysis confirms that the parasocial presentation style (i.e. with a webcam) is indicative of increased viewers and followers, even when considering two-way social interaction (i.e. naming audience members). In sum, although livestreaming allows two-way interaction, success for livestreamers may be driven by appearing rather than being social. The manuscript focuses on Twitch given its prominence in esports and livestreaming.

KEYWORDS:

• Livestreaming
• parasocial interactions
• enjoyment
• media finance
• esports
• livestreamer success
• Twitch

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Due to a technical issue, the “Random” page was inoperable during the collection session on Nov. 14 from 5 p.m. − 1 a.m. Random streams were substituted from the same time during the same weekday from the following week (i.e. Nov. 21).

2. An alternative model with an additional direct path from PSI to livestreamer success was also evaluated; this path was nonsignificant (β = −0.06, p = .513), so it was removed from the final model.

3. As one possible explanation of this divergence from Study 1: perhaps in the few years between data collection for these two studies, Twitch broadcasters nearly universally adopted voice overlay to take advantage of the phenomena identified in this project.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brett Sherrick

Brett Sherrick (Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University) is an assistant professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. His research interests include video games, media psychology, and media industries, and he primarily examines these topics from a social scientific perspective. He is particularly interested in how games and other digital media can improve the lives of media consumers.

Courteney Smith

Courteney Smith (MA, University of Louisville) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University, where she researches player responses to video game music.

Jue Hou

Jue Hou (Ph.D., University of Alabama) is a market research analyst at User Research International. His doctoral research investigated motivations for esports consumption.