Now entering its fourth edition, The Streamer Awards has established itself as the definitive ceremony for spotlighting excellence in the live-streaming industry. With the first event being run back in March of 2022 by creator QTCinderella, The Streamer Awards now has the clout to draw in nominations from the entire live-streaming audience and provide a more accurate, more comprehensive depiction of the personalities shaping the modern streaming landscape. With winners being determined by 70% popular vote, The Streamer Awards is one of the few creative arts ceremonies that acknowledges fan opinions of worthy winners.
This year’s event on the 7th of December is being produced in partnership with streamer-led creative agency Offbrand and features five new categories for nomination: Best MOBA Streamer, Best Sports Streamer, Best Fortnite Streamer (sponsored by Fortnite itself), Best Streamed Collab, and Best Marathon Stream. These last two categories are of particular interest, reflecting trends in how the biggest events on live-streaming are taking shape in 2024 and beyond.
In this article, we’re looking at a few of the categories to provide an insight into which streamers dominated 2024, which new streamers are likely to capture public attention in 2025, and which events are drawing viewers onto live-streaming platforms.
The Streamer of the Year Nominees Represent IRL, Gaming, and Esports Content
Streamer of the Year is perhaps the most vague award up for grabs at The Streamer Awards, being so all-encompassing as to be virtually impossible to objectively decide. The Streamer Awards state that voting is simply “based on which streamer [the voter] finds most entertaining to watch in the category”. Given this vagueness and the weighting of the popular vote, one streamer stands out as the frontrunner in this group.
Kai Cenat is by far the favourite to win Streamer of the Year with an overwhelming 184.8M hours watched from January to November of 2024. This puts him 110M hours watched ahead of the next most viewed competitor in the category, League of Legends esports pro player Caedrel with 74.5M hours watched. Kai Cenat has won the award for the past two events, so his continued dominance would be par for the course. With the domination of his Elden Ring marathons earlier in the year and his recently completed Mafiathon 2 subathon event, his victory seems like a done deal.
There is some room for speculation, though. Perhaps the most viable challenger for the crown is IShowSpeed who saw phenomenal growth this year. In fact, IShowSpeed far outstripped Kai Cenat in terms of peak viewership, with the former hitting a peak of 1M viewers for his Indonesia travel stream compared to the latter’s peak of 673K. This newcomer mentality may be enough to drum up votes from supporters looking to disrupt the status quo. Two of the other nominees also had big wins this year, with PirateSoftware making a name for himself with his record-breaking Twitch Hype Train and Caedrel expanding his influence in esports with the creation of a new team, Los Ratones.
Emerging Streamers Find Success Through Big Personalities and Bigger Collaborations
The real excitement for many fans comes from some of the less easily determined categories featuring newcomers to the scene; specifically, The Rising Star Award and The Best Breakout Streamer Award. Fans of streamers in these categories are passionate devotees who have helped propel their favourite creators to stardom over the course of 2024 – which they hope will translate to votes.
The rising star with the biggest growth is Arky, seeing a 128x increase in viewership from just 2.2K monthly hours watched in January up to 283K in November. Arky creates IRL content in the style of FaZe Clan, although he’s not technically an official member of their main crew (yet, at least). His rise to fame has no doubt stemmed from collaborations with both FaZe Clan’s main crew and other big name streamers. There’s an unmistakable vulnerability to his content which has nurtured a loyal fanbase, such as the outpouring of support from fans after receiving some bad personal news. People looking to go from small time to big time could do worse than studying Arky’s streaming strategy.
The other streamers in this category may be more well-known from a couple of popular events (covered in more detail below), such as Apex Legends streamer Misterarther (49x growth) and Just Chatting streamer Cinna (1.9x growth). Only a couple of the nominated streamers saw declines in viewership (not shown above) such as rayasianboy; however, his drop in viewership for November can be attributed to his month-long collaboration with Kai Cenat for Mafiathon 2. No doubt this kind of exposure will pay dividends when he returns to streaming on his own channel.
One of the most exciting categories to look at is the League of their Own Award which recognizes streamers creating unique types of content. While some might feel these alternative streamers rely on gimmicks, they’re proving which niche content types are viable for commanding an audience. By far the most attention-grabbing nominee in this category is Perrikaryal, who uses a series of electrodes to record her EEG signals (brainwaves) and play through popular games with her mind alone. This “hands-off” approach to gaming combined with her fun personality makes for cutting-edge Let’s Play content. PirateSoftware and RDCGaming also innovate with gaming content, with the former using his expertise as an indie game dev to provide insights into game design, while the latter features a crew of personalities playing games together.
Nominated Events Reflect Celebrity Appearances and Novel Concepts
A few categories look to highlight single events that have captured public interest in the live-streaming sphere during 2024, whether that be due to mass viewership or innovative content types. We’ve explored 2024’s marathon and subathon streams extensively in the past, so here we’re looking at collaborations and other events.
The Best Streamed Collab Award looks to highlight collaborations that were unusual or extended the reach of streaming beyond just streamers alone. Two of the nominees here show how crucial live streaming was in relation to the U.S. election and political coverage: Adin Ross’s collaboration with Donald Trump on Kick, and Former Congressman George Santos’ feature on ConnorEatsPants’ Fortnite Friday stream. Politicians leveraged live streaming to reach younger voters, while streamers saw this as an opportunity to comment on the perceived absurdity of politics in 2024. George Santos’ appearance as an ousted Congressman during chaotic Fortnite gameplay took a very different tone to Adin Ross’ highly structured, single-hour interview with president-elect Trump.
Looking at The Best Streamed Event category reveals four massive collaborations between well-known streamers. Rising star Misterarther got a massive boost from his collaboration with ExtraEmily, nmplol, and fanfan on their Road Trip to TwitchCon stream, bringing in a peak viewership of 39K. But it was CDawgVA’s Cyclethon 3 which brought in the highest peak viewership of 59K among the nominees. CDawgVA has emerged as the preeminent English-speaking streamer based in Japan, hosting unique perspectives on niche Japanese culture with Japanese and Western internet personalities. Cyclethon 3 was a cycling journey through Japan as a fundraiser for the Immune Deficiency Foundation (IDF). By combining healthy content, a righteous cause, and a number of famous cameos (including PewDiePie and Ironmouse), CDawgVA created a wholesome event that the entire live-streaming audience could enjoy.
FaZe Clan Dominates Nominations Across All Categories
Across the 27 categories up for grabs, one group has managed to assert themselves: FaZe Clan. With nominees in 7 categories (8 if you count Arky as being FaZe-affiliated), FaZe Clan have proven that they are a force to be reckoned with. Since FaZe Clan’s new lineup took over earlier this year, they have seen a collective jump in viewership which culminated in SUBtember’s hugely popular subathon event.
Individually, a few members stood out with their nominations at The Streamer Awards. Plaqueboymax brought in 25.6M hours watched from January to November 2024 with his musical content, earning him a nomination in The Best Creative Arts Streamer category and the highest viewership among nominated FaZe Clan members. JasontheWeen came in just behind plaqueboymax with 24.9M hours watched, but showed off an incredible chat engagement of 43.1M messages. This love for jasontheween among his fans no doubt explains his nominations for both Best Breakout Streamer and Best Just Chatting Streamer. Lacy also deserves a special mention here, generating a massive 3M Twitch Bits over the same time period.
From this glance at The Streamer Awards, it’s clear that groups of streamers go much further than individuals trying to make it on their own. Whether it be smaller streamers trying to find an audience, or established streamers aiming to break records, collaboration is essential for live-streaming success across both gaming and non-gaming content. On the topic of gaming, Stream Hatchet will be looking in more detail at the top games on live streaming throughout 2024 next week when we cover The Game Awards.
To keep up to date with the latest top streamers on live-streaming platforms, follow Stream Hatchet:
