Spanish-Speaking Streamers Are the Hottest Thing on Twitch
Spanish is the fastest-growing language on Twitch, but Latin America’s influencer economy is still in early stages of development.
Samantha Rivera livestreaming on Twitch.
Photographer: Daniela G. Maldonado for Bloomberg Businessweek
Samantha Rivera was studying engineering in Mexico in 2020 when a group of friends convinced her she could draw an audience by streaming herself playing Call of Duty, the video game she played in her spare time. Rivera set up channels on Amazon.com Inc.’s livestreaming service Twitch, which caters to gamers, and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and Facebook Gaming. They took off so quickly that she soon began to question whether she should really devote so much time to her studies.
“The first time I told my parents I wanted to drop out they said I was nuts,” says the 24-year-old, who goes by the name “Rivers_gg” online. But her channels, where she plays video games, laughs at memes and watches soccer, continued to grow. “I kept studying for a semester, and after I said I couldn’t do both things, they understood,” she says. She’s now one of the top 100 most popular Twitch streamers in the world, according to TwitchTracker, streaming almost every day for an average audience of about 19,000 live viewers.