Since Ninja moved to Microsoft’s Mixer in 2019, there have been deals worth millions of dollars for successful gaming streamers such as Courage, TimTheTatman, DrLupo, Valkyrae and others. German streamers like MontanaBlack also speculated that there would be a windfall in the event of a change. YouTube in particular often snatched Twitch’s stars away for a lot of money. This should now come to an end, according to a report in the business magazine Bloomberg.
When did the million dollar deals start?
As in professional football, a kind of “bidding” began for superstars who had built up a large audience on Twitch. This started about 4 years ago:
There were also rumors in Germany that a lot was going to happen in the streamer market soon and that some high-profile streamers would be changing. Things are going crazy behind the scenes, noted the top German streamer Reved.
From Overwatch Pro to #1 on Twitch to $100 Million – Who is xQc?
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Bad news for streamers came at TwitchCon in Vegas
This is changing now: Twitch’s new CEO Dan Clancy said in an interview with Bloomberg that the “bidding war” between Twitch and YouTube for top talent is not a business model that can be sustained. He gave the interview to Bloomberg on the sidelines of TwitchCon in Las Vegas.
The CEO of Twitch says that so far Twitch has tried to keep up with other companies’ offerings. This will now be reduced significantly. Standard deals are now being concluded with streamers and exceptions will only be made for a “very small number of talents.”
Twitch had now announced at TwitchCon that its streamers can now broadcast their content simultaneously on all platforms, such as YouTube, TikTok or Instagram.
YouTube and Twitch want to significantly reduce deals worth millions
What about YouTube? YouTube also wants to withdraw from the million-dollar deals, reports Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources: YouTube is reducing the size of deals with gaming live streamers and also reducing the length of the contracts.
In contrast to Twitch’s statement, which comes directly from the boss, Bloomberg was unable to have this statement officially confirmed by YouTube.
Where might there still be money? The big new player that neither YouTube nor Twitch is really talking about is the Kick platform, which is closely linked to the online casino Stake.
Kick has spent a lot of money in recent months on deals to get streamers to switch from Twitch to them. Most recently, the services of Nickmercs were secured.
Twitch and YouTube apparently no longer want to take part in a competition for exclusive rights. Therefore, it wouldn’t be worth it for Kick to buy people out of exclusive deals if these exclusive deals no longer exist and (almost) everyone only has a standard contract.
Advertising deals as a trump card for Twitch and YouTube
That’s what lies behind it: YouTube and Twitch have apparently realized that they lose too much money in a bidding war and ultimately only drive up the market value of streamers, who of course happily take advantage of it.
The economic advantage of both sides compared to Kick is that Twitch and YouTube are considered reputable and offer streamers on these platforms the opportunity to earn a lot of money with companies through advertising deals, so-called “placements”.
The platforms are apparently speculating that attractive advertising conditions will keep streamers on their platforms and that they will not have to reduce their own profits through exorbitant exclusive deals.
How important individual streamers are for the growth and relevance of a streaming site is questionable anyway: in 2019, Mixer poached two top stars from Twitch for a lot of money, but the service remained irrelevant and had to close in 2020.
Now Kick has also bought reach with xQc and Amouranth, but not necessarily increasing relevance. Although the relevance of streamers who move away from Twitch seems to shrink, in return the streaming service they switch to does not necessarily become more relevant.
The German Twitch streamer MontanaBlack had repeatedly flirted with the idea of leaving Twitch in the past and speculated that rival streaming providers would bid for him. Dreams like this could be over for now:
MontanaBlack terminates Twitch contract – wants to know “who loves him the most”