These last two years have forced audiences to seek out arts opportunities and engagements through new mediums. Theatre organizations around the world closed their doors, forced to look for new ways to interact with their audiences. Many turned to digital content, such as streaming and livestreaming. While these two mediums appear to be similar, they are entirely different forms of media. “Livestreaming is when the streamed video is sent over the Internet in real-time, without first being recorded and stored.” It allows for increased engagement with audiences and in many cases, livestreams allow for audiences to directly interact with the host through chat features, polls, and subscriptions.

Digital content quickly became the leading platform for many organizations and industries. In April and May of 2020, Culture Track led a nationwide survey amongst cultural organizations and their audiences, finding that 53% of their respondents reported participating in one or more digital cultural activities. This is promising because the majority of those who participated in a digital event were interacting with an organization for the first time; 55% of Culture Track respondents who used online cultural offerings had never physically visited the theatre whose digital content with which they engaged. Of those digital events, 32% were surveyed as livestreamed events and performances. Culture Track highlighted that the majority of arts and culture goers attended a digital program and that they were willing to explore a new avenue to consume arts and culture.

In recent years, livestreaming has grown into a credible and sustainable industry. Demonstrating its recent impact, Global Web Index tracked media, news consumption, and sports in March 2020, highlighting that during the height of the pandemic, livestreaming accounted for 24% of consumed digital media in the United States. (See Figure 1) This figure is more impressive when compared to the overall livestreaming market across Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube.

Through the third quarter (Q3) of 2021, livestreaming across Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube combined amounts to 26 billion hours watched per week, which is an increase from 20.1 billion hours watched through Q3 in 2020. On Twitch alone, roughly 2.9 billion hours account for non-gaming content: Just Chatting and Special Events. Livestreaming set record-high viewership rates in the wake of COVID-19, increasing by 81% in 2020.

While gaming and esports dominate the viewership of the livestreaming industry, it is actually being used across all sectors, including news networks and live sports. During the 2020 U.S. Election, news networks, such as NBC, ABC News, Fox News, and CBS News, livestreamed across Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook to reach beyond traditional audiences. In total, Election Day coverage on streaming platforms reached 51 million hours watched and 5 million peak viewers. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitch in 2020 for a one-night stream, generating 438K peak viewers, and has since been viewed 1.5 million times. The 2020 NFL Thursday Night Football Twitch Streams reached 1.8 million hours viewed.

While livestreaming is an industry that attracts millions of viewers daily, livestreamed theatrical events accounted for only 9% of all digital cultural events in 2020. Currently, there is an absence in the market for livestreaming theatrical events. While union obligations and other concerns may be hinderances, arts organizations have the opportunity to capture an unknown market and create demand through their own strategies While theatre is envisioned as being held within the bounds of a staged production, the traditional scope of theatrical events need not apply to livestreaming. Theaters must consider going beyond the livestreamed stage readings and streamed performances, and instead, envision a new performance style that actively encourages audiences to participate via chat and donations. Ultimately, the style of livestreamed theatre should complement the digital platform. Organizations have the freedom to experiment, improvise, and connect with their audiences in new ways. The success of livestreaming platforms – and its clear permanence – shows that its immense growth and capitalization potential must be seized. Additionally, online streaming increases opportunities for monetization as detailed by Reid Manning in Twitch: Fundraising Platform and Streaming Service. Overall, digital streaming is here to stay and livestreaming theatre has seemingly unlimited opportunities. For a few samples, check out Magnet Theatre and ImprovNYC on Twitch.