ludwig twitch subscriber record
The exact moment on Ludwig's stream when he broke the record
Twitch/Ludwig
  • Ludwig Ahgren broke the record for most subscribed to channel on Twitch, with over 269,000 subs.
  • The streamer broadcasted his daily life 24/7 for the past 31 days, becoming an internet sensation.
  • Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, the star dethroned by Ahgren, tweeted "records are meant to be broken."
  • See more stories on Insider's business page.

Ludwig Ahgren, who goes by his first name on Twitch, is now the most subscribed to channel on the entire platform. Over the past 31 days, Ahgren has streamed non-stop in an attempt to break the record of 269,154 subscribers held by gaming personality Tyler "Ninja" Blevins. By the end of the month-long stream, Ahgren had over 282,000 subscribers on his channel.

Blevins acknowledged the broken record on Twitter.

Ludwig grew on Twitch with the rise of Among Us

According to a video on the Ludwig YouTube channel, the content creator has always been a fan of performing, joining a comedy group while attending Arizona State University. Around the same time, he started playing Super Smash Bros. Melee and watching pro players on Twitch.

The 25-year-old living in Los Angeles started streaming in 2018 and gained some notoriety as a professional Super Smash Bros. player. His viewership didn't start to take off until early 2020, going from 100,000 followers at the start of the year to over one million by the end, according to Twitch Tracker.

His boom in popularity came in part due to the growth of Among Us, the survival title that allowed streamers to play together and grow their audiences. Midway through 2020, Ahgren was already playing with the game's top influencers like Imane Anys and Jeremy Wang, who go by Pokimane and Disguised Toast respectively.

Streaming for 31-days straight, fans watched the streamer eat, sleep and play video games

On March 14, Ahgren started his subathon stream, adding 10 seconds to the timer for each new sub. He would do nearly everything on stream, like eating, cooking, playing video games and even getting a hair cut to kill the time. Fans of his and those on Twitch flocked to his channel, wanting to see how long the community could keep his stream going. Even when he went to sleep in his racecar bed, his channel would pull in thousands of viewers. At one point during his sleep cycle, his channel had the most concurrent viewers of any on the platform.

"The weirdest thing is every time I wake up, it feels like it gets bigger and bigger," Ahgren told the NY Times in an interview. "Last night, I went to bed with 30,000 viewers and 60,000 subs. I woke up and I was at 70,000 viewers and 70,000 subs."

While he slept, Ahgren's moderators would entertain his audience until the streamer returned. Moderator slime_machine tweeted that the mods were paid "$167,000" for their service and another moderator who goes by Bbarb says he was able to pay off his credit card debt because of the money earned.

Ahgren announced on Saturday that Tuesday night at midnight would be the end of his month-long stream and that he would donate $5 to the Humane Society and St. Jude's for every sub on that final day. At the end of that day, over 24,000 new subscribers pledged that day, raising over $120,000 for charity.

Read the original article on Business Insider