Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitch stream of “Among Us” attracted 435,000 viewers — an impressive figure, especially for a first-time streamer. But how did those numbers stack up against top players like Shroud and Ninja?
The Democratic congresswoman took to Twitch for over two hours Tuesday night to play Innersloth’s hit multiplayer game “Among Us” with top streamers, as well as fellow congresswoman Rep. Ilhan Omar and her daughter Isra Omar.
Twitch would not confirm how Ocasio-Cortez’s stream ranked among top-viewed videos on the platform, but a spokesperson told TheWrap that Canadian streamer Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, one of the world’s most-watched streamers, had over 500,000 views during his return to the Twitch platform earlier this year. Grzesiek returned to Twitch to exclusively stream in early August after it was announced that his previous streaming partner, Microsoft’s Mixer, would shut down.
Twitch said popular streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins still “holds the top spot” for most-viewed Twitch streams, but wouldn’t clarify how many views Blevins has compared to Ocasio-Cortez. Esports leaker Rod Breslau tweeted last night that Ocasio-Cortez’s debut was surpassed by Ninja and Drake playing “Fortnite,” which had 628,000 viewers — but Twitch wouldn’t confirm those statistics or validate Breslau’s figures.
Extrapolating from those numbers, AOC’s stream would rank third highest (which Breslau postulated). Other analysts made guesses as well; StreamElements, an outfit that tracks game streaming platform activity, said it estimated the stream was actually the fourth most-watched on Twitch after a stream last year by Spanish streamer TheGregfg.
Surprisingly, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar were naturals at the game, despite having little experience playing it. The entire operation came together in less than 24 hours after Ocasio-Cortez simply tweeted that it would be fun to play the game in an effort to also encourage people to vote.
Check out tweets from popular player HasanAbi and Rep. Omar, below:
what an incredible night. more than half a million people tuned into watch a record breaking #gotv effort we put together in less than 24 hours which started with a single tweet by @AOC – i hope you boomers are paying attention.
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) October 21, 2020
It was such a blast.
Super grateful to @AOC @hasanthehun and all the amazing gamers for a fun night. Poggers (am I using that right?). S/o to @isaiah_kb for my set up.
Follow us on twitch, I will be back ? https://t.co/ASv7E8V7vp
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) October 21, 2020
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