Over 2 million people watched the Presidential Debate on Citizen TV YouTube live stream

The presidential debate may not have lived up to its expected billing with two of the four contenders Raila Odinga and George Wajackoyah refusing to show up.

But the show must go on and so Agano Party’s David Mwaure and Kenya Kwanza’s William Ruto showed up and showed out.

Even without the two, Kenyans still tuned in to watch and listen to what the two had to offer.

Citizen Digital partnered with YouTube to live-stream the event from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in a bid to reach as many voters online.

The partnership bore fruit at the end of the day as more than two million people joined the six-hour event at varying times.

While millions watched the debates on their TVs, another hundred of thousands logged onto YouTube, clicked on the Citizen Digital Livestream part and followed the proceedings.

The live stream peaked at an impressive 176,327 concurrent viewers during the second-tier debate.

More than 600,000 hours of the debate were watched before the stream ended at 10pm.

The residual video on Citizen TV YouTube channel has gained more than 1.25 million views to hit a total of 2 million views in just the first 12 hours and quickly became the number #1 trending video on the platform.

The live stream was scheduled five days before the debate in a strategy that helped many viewers queue to catch the event.

The scheduled link managed to “catch the attention” of the Google search algorithm, appearing on top results whenever someone searched keywords such as; Elections in Kenya, 2022 presidential debate, and debate Kenya among others.

During the deputy presidential debate, last week, Citizen Digital’s YouTube live stream reached 1.2 million people online.

It hit a high of 156,149 concurrent videos and more than 488,000 hours of the event was watched within the six hours of streaming.

Citizen TV live stream is one of the most popular online TV destinations among online content consumers, reaching millions of people every day.