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UPDATE: This article was updated on the 4th of December 2024 with a complete overview of Kai Cenat’s Mafiathon 2 and a look at the popularity of various celebrity cameos.
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Over the past two years, Kai Cenat has become the undisputed leader of live-streaming hype. The early phase of Kai Cenat’s streaming career thrived off of stunts and collaborations, leading to explosive growth with costumed events and celebrity cameos. One of the cornerstones of his content has been marathon streams in which he pushes himself to provide a consistent flow of non-stop content.
Chief among these are his subathon streams known as “Mafiathons” – a portmanteau of “marathon” and “Mafia”, the name for his fanbase. On the 1st of November, Kai Cenat began Mafiathon 2, a much-hyped event promising to relive the glory of the original (and now iconic) Mafiathon stream back in February of 2023. In this article we’re looking at the success of Mafiathon 2, the popularity of the celebrities that turned up to support the event, and comparing Mafiathon 2 with the past viewership of Kai Cenat’s many other marathon streams.
At the end of Mafiathon 2, Kai Cenat has pulled in monumental viewership. From November 1st to November 30th, Mafiathon 2 generated 82.8M hours watched with a peak viewership of 623K concurrent viewers. To put this into perspective, that’s an average viewership of 119K over 30 straight days of continuous streaming. Mafiathon 2 has far exceeded the total hours watched for the original Mafiathon (discussed more below). On-stream events like a fully costumed fake wedding and numerous group challenges kept viewers tuned in, with 20% of all profit going towards building a school in Nigeria.
As Kai Cenat gained immense popularity, the chance to feature on his streams has become a draw card for celebrities including Snoop Dogg, Miranda Cosgrove, and Bill Nye who all came over to Kai Cenat’s stream throughout Mafiathon 2. But the biggest turnout was for comedians Kevin Hart and Druski at 6.7M daily hours watched for their joint Thanksgiving stream and the aforementioned peak viewership of 623K. Other fan favourites included SZA and Lizzo’s joint collaboration, and same-day chats with Serena Williams and Marshmello.
At the end of Mafiathon 2, Kai Cenat has shattered previous records. Kai Cenat gained an overwhelming 664K subs in November, doubling the previous amount gained by VTuber Ironmouse just a couple months ago. When ironmouse broke the record during Twitch’s annual SUBtember event, Kai Cenat promised to regain his title (having previously held the record for over a year at 306K subs).
Kai Cenat’s sub count has steadily picked up over the last couple of years. In 2022, he was averaging a few thousand new subs per month, before gaining traction in the second half of the year. All of this mounting popularity paid off in February 2023 when Kai Cenat hit a personal record of 55K new subs in one month thanks to the original Mafiathon. As a firmly established streamer, Kai Cenat now regularly pulls in tens of thousands of new subscribers every month even outside of specific subathon events. Note that the quoted values don’t account for “churned” subs (i.e. subscribers that Kai Cenat lost during this time). Churned subs are particularly common for subathon events, as many subscribers opt not to renew after their first month.
Realizing the popularity of his marathon streams, Kai Cenat has constructed his streaming schedule around these events with high-production trailers, costuming, and viewer perks for tuning in. So far, Kai Cenat has hosted 9 major marathon streams, with only three being IRL streams (his two Mafiathons, and his Seven-day Jail marathon). As these streams vary greatly by airtime, the fairest way to compare the relative success of these marathons is by looking at their average viewership and peak viewership.
Looking first at IRL streams, these tend to be Kai Cenat’s most successful marathons. The original Mafiathon and the Seven-day Jail marathon brought in average viewerships of 66.6K and 76.8K, respectively. Mafiathon spawned viral moments which have since become ingrained in the lore of Kai Cenat’s channel, such as getting attacked by dogs (on purpose of course, handled by dog trainers). This first Mafiathon set the precedent for events to come, building Kai Cenat’s legacy as he shot past Ninja and Ludwig’s previous Twitch subs records. The Seven-day Jail marathon pulled in the higher average airtime, mainly due to its much shorter length and pent-up hype from Mafiathon. Mafiathon 2 far surpassed both of these IRL marathons however, with an average viewership of 119K.
In 2024, Kai Cenat tried numerous gaming marathon streams to mix up the formula. By far the most popular solo stream was his original 172-hour Elden Ring marathon which brought in an average viewership of 91.8K. The series was so popular that Kai Cenat followed it up with marathons of all the other major Souls-like titles published by FromSoftware, including Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. IShowSpeed decided to join in the fun, collaborating with Kai Cenat on a 106-hour Minecraft marathon with an average viewership of 115K – nearly as high as Mafiathon 2! Although IShowSpeed no doubt boosted Kai Cenat’s viewing figures, Kai still brought in 4.5M hours watched more than IShowSpeed over the course of their respective Minecraft streams.
Although Mafiathon 2 had many high production value events to keep viewers entertained, by far the most fun aspect for regular fans was seeing which celebrity would turn up next. Almost every single day, Kai Cenat had a new celebrity join him on stream from musicians to actors to scientists. Looking at chat mentions, Druski and SZA were the most hyped celebrity appearances with 50.7K and 33.5K chat mentions, respectively. Other notable guests included Chris Brown (10.1K), GloRilla (2.6K), and a special appearance from Kai Cenat’s Twitch subs rival ironmouse (3.3K) in which Kai Cenat temporarily became a VTuber himself.
Given the overwhelming success of Mafiathon 2 so far, Kai Cenat will no doubt create more IRL marathon streams in the future, hopefully innovating on the format with new twists. But the performance of Mafiathon 2 goes beyond just Kai Cenat’s channel: This event sends a signal to other celebrities that featuring on popular streams is a legitimate way of extending one’s reach. Stream Hatchet will be watching as celebrity cameos increase in 2025 and beyond.
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Sections of the original article regarding the midway point of Kai Cenat’s Mafiathon 2 can be found below:
Thanks to the overwhelming popularity of these marathon events, the majority of Kai Cenat’s most viewed games revolve around recent marathon streams. 6 of the top 11 most viewed categories by hours watched are exclusively related to marathon streams, with Elden Ring coming second at 20.1M hours watched. This isn’t completely surprising, given that Kai Cenat’s marathons also rank among some of the most viewed streams of all time. Funnily enough, the I’m Only Sleeping category even brought in 20M hours watched over the past two years (albeit with a much lower average viewership) due to Kai’s periodic rest periods during marathon streams. Still though, Just Chatting remains Kai Cenat’s most popular category by far with 175.8M hours watched.
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Now entering its fourth edition, The Streamer Awards
Among the top live-streaming platforms, BIGO LIVE is
VTubers come in many forms; in fact, it’s
