As I type this, there's at least 175,000 people watching streams on Twitch. That doesn't seem impressive, but consider the fact that League of Legends is currently under DDOS attacks and there aren't any major Dota 2 tournaments currently running.
Yeah, 175,00 doesn't seem to bad now. But in the grand scheme of things, that pales to some of the peaks Twitch has seen.
The New York Times has charted the surprising rise of Twitch's viewership in the wake of Amazon's purchase of the site and the numbers are pretty impressive. Peak viewership of streams easily rivals TV channels such as Headline News, CNN, MSNBC, E!, and at times MTV and TruTV. Twitch's viewership in these peak moments have reached upwards of 750,000 viewers.
What's even more impressive is the fact that we've begun to see original programming on Twitch. During this write up, I've seen Dungeons & Dragons sessions featured on Twitch's frontpage. Personalities are streaming games outside of their traditional genres for entertainment. Twitch is clearly becoming an entertainment destination and alternative to Television. It'll be interseting to see how their new owners can capitalize on this momentum.
