YouTube was first launched as a video viewing platform back in May 2005 and quickly grew in popularity. The company was then bought by Internet giant Google back in 2006 and the rest is history. YouTube has been constantly upgrading its platform including the introduction of live streaming videos, the introduction of ads which we all hate and the ability to upload 360-degree videos. The live streaming feature comes in handy for people wanting to broadcast events live and the recent Republican National Convention (RNC) and Democratic National Convention (DNC) were no different. YouTube has revealed that live streams of the two political conventions were viewed over 9 million times.
The US political events which saw Donald Trump being picked as the presidential candidate for the Republican Party during the RNC, while Hillary Clinton was picked as the Democratic Party presidential candidate during the DNC. The RNC and DNC were viewed a total of 4.5 million times and 4.6 million times respectively. If the views shed any insight, it could be a close presidential race between both parties. Both live streams were watched by viewers for a total of 25 minutes on average. Viewership for the RNC was highest during Donald Trump’s speech last Thursday, with viewership going up to 217, 000. The DNC on the other hand had its highest viewership on Thursday night during Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech, with around 250, 000 viewers watching the event live on YouTube.
YouTube has live streamed such political events before, including the RNC and DNC back in 2012. However, this is the first time the video viewing platform has made the live streams available to viewers in 360-degrees. While the company didn’t have the total number of views for the political conventions back in 2012, the company did share peak concurrent numbers, also known as the highest viewership at a given time. For RNC 2012, YouTube saw a peak concurrent of 62, 500, while DNC 2012 garnered 178, 000 views at its peak. If the peak concurrent of this years conventions is compared to the conventions held back in 2012, this years RNC saw a large increase in terms of peak concurrent from 2012. Peak concurrent for this years DNC also increased, but only by a slight margin.