Record Breaking Subathons

The Twitch community watched as streamers Ludwig and Ranboo held record breaking subathons in the last months, breaking records and making an impact.

What is a Subathon? A Subathon in Twitch terms is a stream driven by subscriptions. Typically a streamer will set a rule that the stream will continue with each subscriber, getting longer as the number increases. Streamer’s might have a maximum time or a timer on their stream, and these types of streams might range from a couple hours to up to 24 hours or more. On Twitch, long streams with bonus audience participation are a great way to get a streamer’s community together, whether that’s for fun or to reach a common goal. The Ludwig Subathon

For those who don’t already know Ludwig, he currently has over 2 million followers on Twitch. Ludwig has a competitive gaming career which helped him gain fame, including Super Smash Bros competitions, commentating on and hosting Melee events, and starting the Ludwig Ahgren Championship Series 3, a charity event after Nintendo ordered a cease and desist to the Big House 10 Super Smash Bros. tournament. Ludwig began Twitch streaming part time on May 16, 2018, and on February 16, 2019 he dedicated himself to streaming Twitch as a full time career. On November 10th, Ludwig set the world record for the button smashing minigame Domination in the game Mario Party 4, going faster than an assisted attempt and getting a score of 201. Ahgren has also done many advertisements and launched the Mogul Moves line of clothing featuring sweatshirts and hoodies. One of the most recent subathons, taking the internet by storm was held by Ludwig himself. Starting March 14, Ludwig Anders Ahgren started his subathon, announcing the rule that each subscription and donation of at least 500 bits to his Twitch channel would extend the time of his stream by ten seconds. Viewers instantly started subscribing and donating, adding hours to the clock, but no one knew what the stream’s limit was, or how far it

would reach. While streaming, Ludwig told the New York Times he only expected to stream between 24 to 48 hours, but by March 18 he had been live for over 100 hours, earned tens of thousands of new subscribers, and was averaging several thousand viewers. While he was live, several articles were made about him and people saw no end to the steam as people continued to subscribe. However to keep more control over the event, Ludwig put a cap of 100 gifted subs maximum per person, saying he didn’t want people spending too much money to keep the stream endless. Because of this rule, Ludwig ended up having to ban one of the most current popular content creators, Dream.

For about 8 minutes, Dream went live on Twitch to encourage his viewers to support Ludwig, then donated 300 subs. Following the rules, Ludwig’s mods banned Dream from the stream. Afterwards, Dream and Ludwig made a bet while playing chess causing Dream to gift 1000 more subs and extending the timer from 69 hours to 72 hours. Mr. Beast also encouraged donations, causing streamers like Smallant, Dream, Tubbo, and Punz to add another hour to the timer.

Several times during the stream, the timer came close to an end, sometimes reaching 1 to 5 seconds left before viewers swooped in with last second subscribers. While streaming, Ludwig did all sorts of things including playing games like Mario, Valorent, Get Over It, Chess, Pokemon, Geoguesser, Super Smash Bros, and more. Ludwig even kept the stream on as he slept, ate, and went outside, showing his life 24/7. As

Ludwig slept, he kept videos and music playing to entertain his viewers. He even brought his camera into his kitchen and at-home gym. Over the course of the stream, Ludwig also broke multiple records. He kept up his 31 day stream, making it one of the longest on Twitch and broke the record for most Twitch subscribers, reaching over 282,000 subscribers by the end of the subathon. The record was previously held by Ninja (Tyler Blevins) who held a record of 269,154 subs. On the last day of his subathon, Ludwig donated $5 per sub to charity. He chose to donate to the Humane Society of America and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. After the subathon, Ludwig shared that he made $365,350 for charity, and walked away with over $202,000 after taxes and payments. Ludwig surpassed the #1 streamers at the time, including Ranboo who held a

Back in February, Ranboo also held a record breaking subathon, although not as long as Ludwigs. Ranboo, over the last few months, has been gaining popularity quickly and is very surprisingly well known despite being quite new to the platform. Ranboo started streaming in September 2020, and currently has over 2.5 million followers and 2 million YouTube subscribers. He grew in popularity first on TikTok, then after he was invited to the Dream SMP in November, became one of the biggest characters in the server’s storyline. He is also known for being “faceless” where he wears a black and white mask and sunglasses to hide his identity. After getting a large spike of subscribers in February, Ranboo announced he would be doing a stream where all proceeds made from subscribers would be donated to the Trevor Project. The Trevor Project is an organization dedicated to helping LGBTQ+ youths by providing suicide prevention and crisis intervention. Due to the majority of Ranboo’s fanbase being LGBT, and the overall size of his viewership, the stream got lots of attention and Ranboo surpassed many records.

Throughout Ranboo’s stream, he played games like Minecraft, Undertale, Little Nightmares, The Stanley Parable, and watched videos. Within 30 minutes, Ranboo beat the record he started the stream with, reaching #1 most subscribed on Twitch. For being so new to the platform, Ranboo shocked the community and other large content creators. During the subathon, Dream donated 1,000 subscribers to Ranboo, and Ludwig reacted to the streamer’s sudden growth when he opened Ranboo’s subathon during his stream and was shocked at the number of subs. Ranboo quickly began trending on Twitter as his fans shared the stream across social media. The subathon was around 12 hours long, but in that time Ranboo became one of the only 3 people to ever hit 100k subs on Twitch, got the most subscribers in a single day, and has created the biggest hype train of all time. By the end of the stream, Ranboo raised over $100K for the Trevor Project. Currently, Ranboo is still in third place for all time subs behind Ludwig and Ninja, second place for current most subs, and is first place for youngest streamer and fastest growing channel to reach #1 subscribed.