Sherwood News

Kai Cenat broke Twitch’s streaming records, but Twitch itself has seen its viewership dwindle

Twitch creator Kai Cenat made millions from a month-long nonstop livestream.

12/9/24 10:28AM

After streaming on the platform 24 hours a day for 30 days, content creator Kai Cenat broke the record for the most subscribers on Twitch, hitting 727,700 by the end of November… and generating an estimated $3.6 million in revenue in the process, per CNBC.

The “subathon” — a livestreaming event where every new subscription or donation extends the duration of the stream — concluded on November 30 after featuring celebrity guests like Snoop Dogg and Kevin Hart, as well as hours upon hours of its star, uninterrupted even when sleeping. Still, the event saw Cenat gain ~660,000 new subscribers in November alone, per data from TwitchTracker, with over 70% of them opting to pay $4.99 a month for features like ad-free viewing.

While Cenat will now be enjoying meals and bathroom breaks without thousands of eyes on him, he will also be celebrating becoming the biggest streamer on the internet, with more than 36 million followers across Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, and X. Twitch execs will be celebrating, too: the company typically takes a 50% cut of subscriber revenues (though this share is reduced to 30%-40% for top creators). Cenat’s achievements will be good news for the Amazon-owned company, which remains unprofitable despite its acquisition by the tech giant a decade ago.

The fact that Twitch remains in the red is somewhat surprising, considering how much the platform boomed during the pandemic. Total hours watched on the platform surged a whopping 47% in a month in April 2020 off the back of bedroom-bound gamers, vloggers, and DJs. Despite its online clout, Twitch has struggled to bring in enough revenue to cover its costs, causing difficulties in incentivizing its creators and leading to the company infamously withdrawing from South Korea at the start of the year due to expensive network fees. More recently, Twitch viewership has fallen, suggesting that like e-commerce, DIY, and virtual fitness classes, the pandemic seems to have only “brought forward” the rise of content streaming rather than permanently altering its trajectory.

Tom Jones

big deal

6/15/26

Lionsgate persists with decade-long effort to make a “Monopoly” movie

America’s favorite board game is proving a tricky subject for a feature film.

Daily Life in New York City Around The One-year Anniversary of The COVID-19 Shut Down

Tom Jones6/9/26

The BBC has become the world’s top news website... by collapsing a little less than its competition

Press Gazette just published its annual look at the biggest news sites in the world across all languages; for the most part, it doesn’t make for particularly pretty reading.

The journalism industry publication’s latest update, which is based on estimates provided by Similarweb for May, found that 37 of the world’s 50 most visited news sites saw their reach shrink. Press Gazette highlighted that American outlets have been hit particularly hard by declining Google traffic compared to European counterparts, owing to the platform’s AI features rolling out earlier in the US.

Even the BBC, having climbed the rankings from last year to top the 2026 chart — reportedly in part thanks to Similarweb’s decision to combine the “.co.uk” and “.com” versions of the URL, given that the sites redirect to each other depending on the user’s location — showed a 1.9% decline from last year.

Millie Giles

PLAY THE BILLS

6/8/26

Last night’s Tony Awards were a curtain call for a record-smashing season on Broadway

This year’s star-studded theater awards wrapped up the highest-grossing season Broadway’s ever seen.

Millie Giles

SOUND FAMILIAR?

6/5/26

Kids these days are listening to more songs from the good old days

Music nostalgia is in full swing, and the younger listeners of today appear to be partying like it’s pre-1999.

Saleah Blancaflor6/4/26

Drake whiffs on an expected No. 1 on Spotify

Drake started at the bottom and he’s here, but not quite at the top... of Spotify, at least.

It’s been nearly three weeks since Drake dropped his three surprise albums — “Iceman,” “Habibti,” and “Maid of Honour.” Heading into the month, prediction markets were rating it a near certainty, a 98% chance, that Drake’s sonic onslaught was enough to snag the No. 1 slot on Spotify at least once in June.

But, while he surpassed the late Michael Jackson and took up three slots on the Billboard album chart at once, his newly released songs haven’t quite cracked the popular music-streaming platform’s top charts, and market seem to think the moment has passed.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Spotify’s “Top Songs - Global” chart currently show that Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” which is more than four decades old, Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and a Beat,” which climbed back to the top of Spotify charts following his Coachella set in the spring, Olivia Rodrigo’s new angsty love song “The Cure,” and BTS’s “Swim” are all ahead of Drake’s “STFU Janice” from his “Iceman” album.

While Spotify previously reported last month that Drake’s “Make Them Cry” was the most streamed album in a single day this year, that was later revealed to be a data error.

Prediction markets currently show traders are betting there’s only a 15% chance Drake will have a No. 1 song on Spotify in June.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift is in the lead at 98% — a day before the release of her new original song “I Knew It, I Knew You,” which she wrote and performed for Disney and Pixar’s upcoming “Toy Story 5” — followed by Olivia Rodrigo, whose highly anticipated album “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love” comes out next Friday.