Watching People Playing Videogames Helps YouTube's Top 100 Channels Grow 80%

The top 100 YouTube channels pulled in 9 billion views in July, an increase of more than 80% over the last year.

Data from Tubefilter points towards the growing popularity of videogame vlogs, with Swedish gamer PewDiePie cementing his place as the most watched channel of YouTube, with 438.9 million monthly views and 29.47 million subscribers.

PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjelberg, saw his viewing figures double since July 2013, whilst his subscriber count rose 150%.

With gaming channels Stampy (199.6m views) and UK-based The Diamond Minecart (186.1m views) reaching fourth and fifth place respectively, the advent of mainstream video game videos and livestreams has officially arrived.

The top 100 gaming channels on YouTube generated 4.34 billion views in July alone, according to a separate study by Tubefilter.

Last week Amazon beat Google to acquire Twitch, the video game streaming platform, for £580m, preventing a Youtube-Twitch merger that would have undoubtedly dominated the increasingly lucrative business.

In July Twitch received more than 55m unique visitors watching 15 billion minutes of content. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos referred to the video game streaming service as "the future of gaming."

In amongst the rest of Tubefilter's latest findings, Shakira is YouTube's most popular musician, raking in 226.6m views and ranking at Number 3.

Pop stars Enrique Iglesias (185m), Katy Perry (175m) and Pitbull (155.6m) also featured in the top 10.

The biggest climber was US talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, who saw her online audience grow by 119% month-over-month to reach 80.3m views and claim #46.