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- Burberry is the first luxury brand to stream content on Twitch. The British brand livestreamed its spring summer 2021 collection for London Fashion Week on the channel on 17th September.
- Twitch might be reaching a tipping point. The average number of people viewing content at any one time was 1.4M. The highest recorded viewers at any one time was 4M in February.
- 43% of users are Gen Z the people on Twitch are diversifying. Twitch say that 45% of the gamers alone are female.
- Twitch still has unexploited potential. Engagement is high, with users spending an average of 95 minutes a day on it.
- It’s a special social channel, aptly demonstrated by the avoidance of commercial messaging and typical adverts, and novel functionality like “squad mode”.
- There’s a huge opportunity for brands and individuals, big or small to utilise Twitch – utilise and contribute to the sky high engagement figures.
Okay, so I’m going to start by saying I’m pretty proud of my own industry analysis regarding Twitch and the future adoption of its social live streaming. I wrote about this in my second ever issue of Anthro (awww!) back in August. Then I focused on how exciting the live music and sports use cases were and how it was only a matter of time before more commercial and mainstream adoption happened. Now, I’m looking into the use of Twitch for none other than Burberry’s Spring Summer 2021 London Fashion Week show on 17th September.
“Burberry’s Twitch Show Was Extremely Chaotic”
Fashion Week is chaos. I’m telling you this first hand from my experience as blogger, attending and writing up shows for years during my late teens and early twenties. By my mid-twenties I vowed to give up LFW because it’s exhausting + balancing it with full time work each season is not that doable. So when High Snobiety reported Burberry’s live Twitch stream as chaotic… there is no way a future of live streams can be more chaotic than IRL shows- running around the city with cameras and laptops trying to look chic while you sweat and simultaneously post to social media and write up your show reviews. Maybe streaming fashion shows regularly is the future!?
Twitch’s Tipping Point
Twitch has 140M users worldwide, who mostly live stream video games like Call Of Duty and Fornite. We’ve just seen the first luxury fashion x Twitch partnership thanks to Burberry. This might just be the tipping point for more mass adoption. Adam Harris is the global head of brand partnerships at Twitch and he’s recently been reported nothing his confidence in the luxury fashion segment.
Lockdown has been the catalyst that live streaming needed
Lockdown has seen a surge in live streaming across all channels, including the standard Instagram and Facebook. So it’s only natural for Twitch to be flourishing- doing the very thing it was built to do.
Let’s dive into some stats to prove just how engaging Twitch is right now. In February 2020, the average number of people viewing content at any one time was 1.4M. The highest recorded viewers at any one time was 4M in February. More recent figures are not yet available.
But even looking back at 2018’s stats shows just how well Twitch is doing. For comparison, in 2018, CNN peaked at 783K viewers at any given time, MSNBC at 885K and ESPN at 1.5M. Twitch stood at over 900K according to Twitch tracker.
Not just for gamers
User numbers grew by 57% in the first four weeks of lockdown. 43% of users are Gen Z, but based on the brands utilising Twitch (Burberry, Premier League and Anjunadeep to name just 3) the people on Twitch are clearly diversifying. Twitch say that 45% of the gamers are female… Food for thought in itself, right?
Burberry isn’t Twitch’s first foray into fashion as a whole. It’s worth noting that more accessible brands such as Champion and Anti Social Social Club have created exclusive collections with Twitch streamers in the past, and some of the top users have released their own merch. FaZe Clan, an eSports collective/talent management company collaborated on merch with rap platform Lyrical Lemonade making $750K in just 8 minutes and selling out all their stock. How mad is that?
High engagement… Dayum.
Adam Harris has been quoted explaining that Twitch still has unexploited potential. Engagement is high, with users spending an average of 95 minutes a day on it. It’s a special social channel, aptly demonstrated by the avoidance of commercial messaging and typical adverts.
Squad mode
Now this is a pretty cool functionality and it’s unique to Twitch. Squad Mode is usually used to show multiple gamers playing at once. This lets users choose which stream to view and interact with. Burberry used this in a really cool way, with different streams varying from pre-show discussions between celebs like Bella Hadid and Rosalia, backstage models getting ready to walk to runway, as well as views of the performing artist Eliza Douglas. This gave viewers a wicked opportunity to watch and comment on any part of the show experience. Much of which is off limits during IRL fashion shows.
Burberry CMO Rod Manley explained “Twitch unlocks an exciting new space where our Burberry community can be digitally transported to feel like they have a virtual seat at our live show. It is an interactive experience where guests can connect with both our brand and each other while personalising their viewing journey”.
Your use of Twitch
You don’t have to be a global glossy corporation to make Twitch work for you. Ravesbourne University London showcased its grad fashion collection on Twitch in July, reaching 60K unique viewers. There’s also so much opportunity for normal people and smaller brands to stream too, if live streaming is your medium of choice.