The Real Reason Will Smith Broke Twitch’s Biggest Streaming Record

Every summer, the Spanish Twitch streamer Ibai Llanos hosts a livestreamed boxing tourney called La Velada del Año (The Evening of the Year). In conscionable 4 years, it has gone from a comparatively tiny lawsuit featuring matches betwixt a fewer influencers from Spain to an tremendous planetary improvement featuring implicit 20 combatants and a big of philharmonic performers. A record-breaking 5.9 cardinal Twitch users tuned successful to spot this year’s event, held July 13 astatine a packed 80,000-seat stadium successful Madrid.

The biggest sanction connected the measure was Will Smith, who appeared arsenic a headlining philharmonic enactment and led the assemblage successful the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air TV amusement theme. The Oscar victor was the archetypal English-speaking performer successful the event’s history, but helium wasn’t the astir fashionable portion of the evening. According to information from StreamsCharts, the most-viewed moment during the stream, which besides acceptable a grounds with 3.8 cardinal simultaneous viewers, was a boxing lucifer betwixt 2 influencers, 1 from Spain and 1 from Chile.

The lawsuit makes for a cleanable cross-section of what net popularity looks similar successful 2024. For a start, there’s the boxing matches. Mano-a-mano combat has been a promotional maneuver for influencers for years. Examples look crossed the spectrum, from controversial YouTuber turned MMA fighter Logan Paul each the mode to tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who made superior preparations for a cage lucifer past twelvemonth earlier Zuckerberg called it off. In an epoch erstwhile taste cachet is defined by parasocial stan armies, who unrecorded up to their sanction by getting into fierce, bitter rivalries with different fans, there’s an indelible powerfulness to seeing these celebrated figures virtually commercialized blows.

Of course, successful reality, these influencers and net personalities recognize it’s not truly a competition. Ibai regularly collaborates with different streamers from crossed the globe, combining their audiences and instrumentality bases for much engagement and a higher profile. The aforesaid time arsenic La Velada del Año, YouTuber MrBeast uploaded a video entitled “50 YouTubers Fight For $1,000,000.” The video is done successful MrBeast’s accustomed frenetic style, but the format itself seems intelligibly inspired by Ibai Llanos’ tournament. Ibai himself is 1 of the 50 YouTubers who appears successful the video, forestalling immoderate accusations from fans of either streamer.

The contention being conceived for Twitch broadcast besides means it’s modeled aft an esports tourney arsenic overmuch arsenic a UFC fight. Ibai, who serves arsenic the MC and commentator for the evening’s matches, archetypal achieved occurrence connected Twitch arsenic a Spanish-language League of Legends announcer. He has parlayed his streaming occurrence into a media empire, including a televised speech show and cofounding the Kings League, a shot league that optimizes the crippled for streaming by adding video-game-inspired rules similar power-ups. Video games are already a immense industry, but they’re starting to go popular for marketers, suggesting events similar La Velada del Año, which bring the civilization of gaming into much accepted spaces, volition lone go much communal connected Twitch and off.

Twitch itself is successful an odd, paradoxical position. The streaming level has seen an wide decline successful idiosyncratic and gross maturation for the past fewer years and has never turned a profit since being acquired by Amazon successful 2015. In February, the tract completely withdrew from Korea, which had been 1 of its biggest overseas markets. At the aforesaid time, though, Twitch streamers are bigger than ever arsenic the wide assemblage for livestreams grows. Spain successful peculiar has go an tremendous market for Twitch streamers, since they tin watercourse to a planetary Spanish-speaking assemblage portion taking vantage of lucrative European marketing deals.