Pokimane named as highest earning female Twitch streamer for 2020

As arguably the biggest female star on Twitch for some time now, it should come to no surprise that Imane “Pokimane” Anys has made a fortune during her time as a live streamer. Several content creators like Pokimane have made millions of dollars in the short space of a few years, proving just how viable a career path in streaming can be.

This year has, once again, been an impressive year for the streaming industry. It just seems to keep growing at an extraordinary rate, year in and year out, with the same familiar faces at the forefront of the website Twitch’s success.

The rise in popularity of video games this year such as Among Us, Fall Guys and Valorant all aided content creators to accumulate tremendous viewership numbers, ensuring that people were constantly being entertained during the worldwide lockdown restrictions.

Fall Guys took the live streaming world by storm this year. (Image Credit: Mediatonic)

Earlier in July, The Verge reported that Twitch viewership for the year was rapidly increasing after the announcement of the first lockdown. They said:

“Viewership grew to 5 billion hours watched between April and June, which is a huge increase no matter how you look at it: it’s up more than 50 percent from the first quarter of 2020, and it’s up more than 60 percent over the same three months in 2019.”

The pandemic of Covid-19 this year has stunned the world and has placed our planet in one of the most precarious situations of modern history; unemployment rates have been rampant, life in general has become a lot more difficult for the average citizen, not to mention the fact that people have spent a significant chunk of the year indoors, avoiding the potential of catching the deadly virus.

However, the implications of our global situation have provided positives for the online world, video gaming culture and content creation. More people this year and now have been viewing and creating content than ever before.

Global regulations have forced everybody to remain indoors and, as a result, the statistics for live streaming platforms such as Netflix and Twitch have skyrocketed this year. People have turned to playing, watching or creating content for video games in a time where physical contact between friends and family has been restricted.

With more people watching streams and tuning in to check out their favorite content creators, naturally, this has meant that those who were fortunate enough to be already established in the scene have been able to generate a ton of cash during lockdown, where people in some other industries may have been struggling.

Nevertheless, the positives for online media culture remain and data released by Saving Spot reveals just how much some of the most popular streamers raked in for 2020.

(Image Credit: NetCashUSA)

The top spot for highest earning female streamer is Pokimane, who hails from Canada, with estimated yearly earnings of $550,060. There is a significant gap between her and second place streamer and fellow Canadian Amouranth with $384,599, and close friend of Pokimane’s LilyPichu at third with $339,354.

According to Saving Spot “among the top 10 female streamers, 70% of revenue comes from subscriptions, 23% from ads, and 8% from donations,” which would explain the enormous level of income for these content creators.

This makes sense as the bulk of money to be earnt on Twitch is via those revenue streams. Big time streamers like Pokimane will also generate a decent portion of their wealth from sponsorship deals and endorsements; if you go on any big streamer’s channel page, you can scroll down to the streamer bio section which lists various sponsors.

Elsewhere, in terms of the highest overall earners on the live streaming platform for the year, Saving Spot finds that variety content creator and ex Overwatch pro Félix “xQC” Lengyel was the highest earning Twitch streamer.

(Image Credit: NetCashUSA)

The Canadian made some serious money this year; Saving Spot estimates that his yearly earnings were a whopping $1,984,001, with $1,595,167 of that from subscriptions alone. It seems to have been a good year for Canadian streamers!

Amongst xQc are notable streamers and other household names such as Nickmercs, TimTheTatman, Castro_1021, HasanAbi and, of course, Summit1G.

All of the above have spent the majority of 2020 earning tons of cash, proving once again just how lucrative the streaming industry has become.