TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the trending stories in gaming. In today’s news: Games make up almost 75% of global mobile spend in H1 2019; League of Legends is most viewed game on Twitch; Pokémon GO grosses USD$2.65bn (£2.12bn) in its first three years.

Games make up almost 75% of global mobile spend in H1 2019

Worldwide mobile game revenue made up almost 75% of all spend on App Store and Google Play in the first half of the year, despite only comprising approximately 35.5% of app downloads, according to figures from Sensor Tower.

However gaming revenue has grown at a slower rate, at an average of 11.2% year-on-year, compared to total app revenue growth of 15.4%. As covered in yesterday’s TheGamingEconomy roundup, this slowdown can be attributed to the ongoing restrictions from the Chinese government on the sale of new mobile gaming titles.

League of Legends is most viewed game on Twitch

Riot Games’ League of Legends has replaced Epic Games’ Fortnite as the most viewed game on Twitch in the first half of 2019, according to data from The Esports Observer. A total of 512.3m hours were spent watching the freemium MOBA title on the streaming platform, which was released in 2009, compared to a viewership of 465m hours on Fortnite. This represents a decline of 66.1m hours for the latter.

Interestingly, in third place was ‘Just Chatting’, Twitch’s vlogging mode which debuted in September last year, replacing the ‘IRL’ tag which was broken up into smaller subsections. Non-gaming content listed under this tag was watched for 372.5m hours, indicating the importance of influencers in the gaming market.

Pokémon GO grosses USD$2.65bn (£2.12bn) in its first three years

Niantic’s Pokémon GO has grossed an estimated USD$2.65bn (£2.12bn) in revenue during its first three years, which equates to an average of USD$2.4m (£1.92m) each day since its launch. Sensor Tower, which analysed the data, has also predicted that the title will have generated over USD$3bn (£2.4bn) by the end of 2019.

The free-to-play AR title continues to be highly popular, remaining in the top ten for all apps in terms of revenue in Q2 2019. A subsequent title which was also based on existing IP, Harry Potter Wizards Unite, was released earlier this year, however it has not seen the same post-launch success, given that it is estimated to gross USD$10m (£7.99m) in its first month, compared to USD$206m (£164.5m) for Pokémon GO during the same period.