Marathon streams remain a special event on any streamer’s schedule, encouraging viewers to tune in for a more in-depth experience with their favorite content creator. Mega-popular Agentinian streamer ElSpreen is an expert at making spectacles out of his own 24 hour streams, as seen with his most recent 24 hour cinema stream.
ElSpreen, or simply Spreen, is primarily known for his Minecraft content which he uploads to his YouTube channel Spreen DMC. But recently, he’s been streaming more on Twitch to create shooter content (such as his participation in the recent Rust Bellum Twitch Drops event) and IRL content where he chats with friends and fellow content creators. His 24 hour cinema stream falls into the latter category, following ElSpreen as he watched Disney+ content with friends for 24 hours straight.
We’re looking at the success of this most recent marathon stream, and placing it in the recent trend of marathon streams that has emerged over the past few weeks to see if this viewer fascination will continue.
ElSpreen’s Latest 24-Hour Stream Catches Viewer Attention
ElSpreen’s cinema stream had a steady performance. Over 24 hours, the marathon brought in 536K hours watched with an average concurrent viewership of roughly 22K. This was a decent showing given the low-key nature of the event. However, it pales in comparison to ElSpreen’s last 24-hour stream in which he lived inside The Obelisca de Buenos Aires for 24 hours as his fans cheered him on outside. This “Obelisk stream” brought in just over 2M hours watched, with a peak viewership of 160K. This Obelisk stream might have been helped by the spectacle of the stunt, and by the popularity of ElSpreen’s guest Unicornio.
Chat Engagement Underwhelms Across the Entire Stream
ElSpreen’s stream had a high turnover of viewers, with 233K unique viewers tuning in at some point during the stream. More pressingly, just 20% of these viewers engaged with the stream via chat. For a regular stream, this number is great, but for a big event one would expect high engagement. The reason for this low chat engagement may be due to the laid-back nature of the stream: Watch parties generally feature less talking by the streamer, and certainly less direct conversation with fans. While viewers might have found comfort in ElSpreen’s stream, it seems that watch parties are not a great way of creating active viewers.
Marathon Streams Have a Resurgence on Live-Streaming Platforms
ElSpreen’s marathon stream represents one more in a string of marathon streams that have emerged over the past couple of months. Most famously, Kai Cenat’s marathon Elden Ring stream won over viewers with a massive 13M hours watched generated over the first five days of his stream alone. This kicked off a slew of other marathon streams, including Rainbow Six Siege streamer Jynxzi’s own Elden Ring stream, a marathon VALORANT stream for Kyedae, and even a follow-up stream from Kai Cenat for the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.
Marathon streams are hot right now as a result, and everyone is taking on the challenge – even non-conventional marathon channels. In one example, a group of streamers banded together for a Twitch marathon to have their say in the French election. Despite the fact that many viewers will deliberately seek out marathon content, Twitch still does not have a “Marathon” tag that creators can utilize.
Given that these marathon streams are an excellent sponsorship opportunity, as seen with ElSpreen and Disney+, it will be interesting to see if more branded marathon streams pop up in the near future. Stream Hatchet will be watching to see how the trend develops.
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