Prevalence and comparisons of alcohol, candy, energy drink, snack, soda, and restaurant brand and product marketing on Twitch, Facebook Gaming and YouTube Gaming

Abstract Objective: To compare and evaluate the prevalence of food and beverage marketing on the livestreaming platforms Twitch, Facebook Gaming and YouTube Gaming, as well as examine growth of food and beverage marketing on these platforms over a 17-month period of data collection. Design: Cross-sectional data were analysed across three livestreaming platforms and six food and beverage categories: alcohol, candy, energy drinks, snacks, sodas and restaurants. Setting: Stream titles of livestreamed events as well as corresponding hours watched on Twitch, Facebook Gaming and YouTube Gaming. Participants: None. Results: There were significant differences between the use of food and beverage brand mentions in stream titles across all three studied platforms (P < 0·05), as well as hours watched across platforms (P < 0·05). Energy drinks dominated food and beverage brand mentions across platforms, followed by restaurants, soda and snacks. All platforms demonstrated growth over the 17-month data collection period. Post-hoc analyses revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted both immediate and sustained growth across all platforms, with the greatest impact observed on the Twitch platform. Conclusions: Food and beverage marketing as measured through stream titles is widely prevalent across the three most popular livestreaming platforms, particularly for energy drinks. Food marketing on these platforms experienced growth over the past 17 months which was accelerated substantially by the COVID-19 pandemic. Future work should assess the sustained impact this growth may have on marketing practices and eating behaviour.