Bristol’s young driver Lando Norris has cemented his place in the sport of Formula One at the age of just 23, but now he’s been given a new and surprising accolade.
Norris has been named in the top three celebrity streamers on the online gaming platform Twitch. Twitch allows people to play online games and let people watch them do it live - and some professional gamers have millions of followers.
When he’s not tearing up the F1 circuit, Lando Norris is an avid gamer and remarkably, out of all the celebrity Twitch streamers in the world, only football legends Neymar and Sergio Aguero have more followers.
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A new study conducted by online gaming platform Solitaired analysed Twitch data to find out how many followers each celebrity account has, and how many views and game streams, excluding reruns, they have gained.
And Bristol’s own driving ace came out third, with 1.37 million followers, ahead of a range of famous gamers, including music stars Post Malone and T-Pain, and also ahead of politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In fact, Lando Norris could have a claim for being top of the study. For while former Man City legend Sergio Aguero is top with 4.66 million followers, and Brazil star Neymar Jr is second with 2.13 million followers, Lando Norris has actually gained more viewers than the top two combined - in other words, while millions more follow the footballers on Twitch, even more actively watch Lando do his thing online - he’s streamed 51 games and been viewed almost 22 million times.
In his bio, he jokes that he is a ‘temporararayayrly full time streamer, drives in Formula 1 every now and then too’. His commitment to the online gaming world is not in doubt - he’s founded Quadrant, his own eSports and content creator team.
“Twitch is a unique platform as it is solely dedicated to live-streaming and offers a real-time interactive chat experience,” said a spokesperson for Solitaired.
“This level of interaction through each live stream is how popular Twitch streamers have managed to build up highly engaged audiences, so it's great to see such a wide range of celebrities from different backgrounds creating accounts to engage with their fans. It's interesting to note the range of celebrities, even just in the top ten most followed, from footballers, musicians to politicians; it's amazing to see how welcoming the Twitch community is to a diverse range of streamers,” he added.
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