Streaming in Russia: Key Platforms and Top Streamers 2024

Streaming audiences are expanding, which makes it a great option for promoting games and other products. By engaging with popular streamers and creating high-quality streaming content, you can significantly increase your product's visibility. In this article, we will examine the top streaming platforms in Russia in 2024, analyzing their audiences and popular broadcasts to better understand how streaming can effectively engage today's viewers.

Key streaming platforms in Russia

In 2024, Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and VK Play Live are the primary platforms for gaming broadcasts in Russia, in that order. While there is an interactive Chinese platform called Trovo, it is not as popular as VK in Russia.

Twitch

Twitch unequivocally leads the streaming industry. Following its spin-off from Justin.tv in 2011, it has maintained its dominance, currently holding nearly 75% of the global market share and a vast and diverse audience worldwide. Its intuitive user interface caters to both streamers and viewers alike. The service's departure from the Russian Federation in 2022 has not had a significant impact on established accounts, despite the inability of Russian streamers to withdraw funds from the service or receive technical support. However, new users have encountered difficulties due to this change. 

Furthermore, the platform's global popularity has recently declined. Three years ago, Twitch had over 9.9 million streamer accounts, but today the platform has just over 5.4 million active channels and 2.4 million one-step viewers.   Despite the decline in Twitch's audience in other countries, the number of Russian Twitch viewers has grown significantly, increasing by 24% in 2024.

YouTube Gaming

YouTube is a popular streaming platform that is often used alongside other platforms. In the past, it used to benefit from the "rewind" feature, but Twitch has had it for a couple of years now. However, Twitch consistently receives more views than YouTube. Nevertheless, YouTube Gaming budgets in Russia are increasing, with a projected market volume of around $238 million in 2024.

VK Play

VK Play is quickly becoming one of the top three most popular streaming portals in Russia. With high-quality broadcasts and a large audience, it has the potential to surpass Twitch in popularity if it continues to improve its functionality and streamer support programs. It's worth noting that VK also has its own gaming service, VK Play.

Trovo

Trovo, a Chinese platform, primarily attracts audiences interested in mobile games. However, World of Tanks dominates the platform, putting streamers of other games at a disadvantage. Streamers avoid using Trovo due to its inefficient internal currency conversion system and low viewership (unless, of course, we are talking about streamers with large audiences on other services), so it mostly serves as a backup option in case of problems with other platforms. 

In addition, there are other streaming platforms, such as kick.com, Rumble and BLAST; streaming is also available on such popular services as TikTok and Steam, but all of them do not attract a significant share of the audience, especially in the Russian-speaking segment.

Streaming platforms audience in Russia

Over the past two years, the age range of game stream viewers has shifted towards the 25-35 category, with millennials now comprising 47% of viewers and Zoomers (17-25 year olds) making up 44.5%. Additionally, approximately 8% of the gaming platform audience are representatives of Generation X, aged 35-45. Millennials, the most financially stable demographic, provide financial support to their favorite streamers. They make up 46% of the audience for donation services, while Zoomers account for 35%.

Twitch's audience primarily consists of 'letsplayers'. The most popular games streamed on this platform in 2024 are GTA5, League of Legends, and Valorant. Other popular games in the top 10 include Fortnite, Minecraft, Dota 2, World of Warcraft, and Apex Legends. As of February 2024, the top three games have attracted 151.6 million, 126.5 million, and 88.4 million active users, respectively.

Top 10 Twitch streamers in Russia

The top 10 Russian Twitch streamers for March 2024 are determined by their average number of viewers, number of subscribers, views, and broadcasting time. The rating changes monthly to reflect the audience's favorites.

EVELONE192

Vadim Kozakov, also known as BigNose, is a popular stream host who gained fame during the Covid epidemic. He started with CS:GO and later moved to Fortnite. Kozakov founded the streaming community Freak Squad and was a partner of Epic Games. Despite receiving a ban on Twitch in 2020, he has successfully developed a channel on Youtube, where his broadcasts now receive up to 700,000 views each. After unlocking Twitch, EVELONE192 gained almost 2.5 million followers; on YouTube, the streamer now has over 700,000 subscribers.

 

 

Bratishkinoff

Letsplayer Vova Bratishkin is known not only for his participation in FIFA ONLINE 4 and CS GO tournaments but also for his career as a showman in the TNT project "Become a Streamer".  Also, bratishkinoff is a well-known hard-mouthed man in the Internet space with an audience of 2.8 million viewers on Twitch and 230,000 on YouTube.

 

 

Buster

Vyacheslav Leontiev, also known as Buster on his Twitch stream, has impressively amassed over 3.5 million subscribers and runs a successful YouTube channel with almost 770,000 subscribers. In late 2023, Buster held a live ceremony where he awarded the prestigious 'Legend of Steam-2023' award to his carefully selected content creators.

 

 

Shadowkekw

Maxim Pavlov, the organizer of Dota 2 tournaments, also broadcasts CS:GO from different locations to his almost half a million Twitch followers. His live streams attract up to 27,000 viewers.

 

 

Nix

Alexander Levin, a former professional esports player, is one of the top ten most popular game streamers in the world. With his primary focus on Dota 2, he also showcases his skills in other games such as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Counter-Strike, and DARK SOULS III.    His streams consistently surpass official tournament broadcasts in terms of viewership, and he boasts an impressive following of over 700,000 on Twitch, 188,000 on YouTube, and almost 90,000 on VK.

 

 

RECRENT

Dmitry Osintsev is a specialist in battle royale games and first-person shooters. With a background in Overwatch, he has since expanded his expertise to include CoD: Warzone, CS 2, and Valorant. Dmitry won the PUBG duo championship solo this year. He has amassed a following of 1.2 million subscribers on Twitch, where he primarily streams his gameplay.

 

 

JESUSAVGN

Alexei Gubanov, also known as JESUSAVGN, is a streamer who has gained popularity through his DayZ game streams and raids which helped many aspiring stream hosts to "rise". He currently boasts an impressive 1.8 million subscribers on Twitch and 1.38 million subscribers on YouTube.

 

 

STROGO1337

He comes from the streaming community Freak Squad and is known for streaming Dota 2 and CS:GO across multiple Twitch accounts. Despite occasional bans, he has amassed a significant following of 5.5 million on TikTok and previously on YouTube (currently facing a temporary ban).

 

 

M0NESYOF

This nickname is used by former cyber athlete Ilya Osipov, who played in the Natus Vincere Junior League and G2. In 2023, after winning two Intel Extreme Masters championships, he became one of the world's top four players. He has almost 1 million followers on Twitch and just over 200,000 on YouTube.

 

 

STRAY228

Oleg Bocharov, another former professional cyber athlete, has shifted his focus from Valve's MOBA to CS:GO and Dota 2 over the last ten years. His primary interests are streaming gameplay and teaching Dota tricks. He boasts over 1.5 million followers on Twitch and 221,000 on YouTube. On average, each of his streams attracts about 10,000 viewers. He occasionally promotes viewer channels for free.

 

 

Game streaming is a powerful communication tool for building sustainable interaction with a large gaming audience. Long-term relationships with viewers are built on the basis of shared gaming experiences, which can lead to user loyalty. It can be further used to convey advertising messages. Therefore, promoting game products through a loyal audience of streamers is an effective tool for game marketing. While we have written a more detailed review of the best strategies in gaming on our blog, it is important to note that there are other tools suitable for the movie industry as well. We also paid special attention to mobile games, as their promotion differs from other gaming products. 

RMAA team has extensive expertise in the gaming segment, which is confirmed by joint projects with many developers in the international gaming market. To discuss your project, please fill out an application form on our website to discuss your project.

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