Streamer breaks Twitch record with month-long broadcast

Alistair Mason, PA
2-min read

A YouTube star has broken the record for the most paid subscribers on streaming channel Twitch after broadcasting himself non-stop for a month.

Ludwig Ahgren broke the record, set by gamer Ninja in 2018, when he passed 269,154 subs on Tuesday.

Mr Ahgren’s broadcast, which began on March 14, was a so-called subathon – a subscription marathon – in which he extended the length of the stream by 10 seconds for every new subscriber.

Closing out his stream on Tuesday night, Mr Ahgren said: “I can’t know any of you – 200,000 people on my stream right now – but somehow you guys as a collective made me really happy.”

Over the course of the month he has lived his life on camera – even keeping it rolling while he was asleep in his car-shaped bed.

As fans tried to push him towards the record owned by Ninja – real name Tyler Blevins, who is best known for playing Fortnite – he announced money from the final day’s subscriptions would go to charity, along with portions of earlier subs.

According to reports, the total he raised for charity was more than one million dollars (£725,000).

Ninja tweeted: “Records are meant to be broken, I would be lying if I said wasn’t a little sad but congrats @LudwigAhgren on holding the new sub record on twitch”

Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, is most well known as a platform on which gamers broadcast themselves playing video games, but it also has broader content including lifestyle channels.

It offers three levels of subscription ranging from 4.99 dollars (£3.62) to 24.99 dollars (£18.11).