It almost looks like a hemorrhage. For several weeks, content creators have been abandoning Twitch in favor of Kick, a competing video streaming platform launched at the end of 2022. Among the recruits: the chess player GMHikaruthe French number of stream from Call of Duty ChowH1 (followed by more than 745,000 people on Twitch) and, most recently Ninjaaka Tyler Blevins, who has accumulated 18.5 million subscribers. This one criticized Twitch’s restrictions on streaming on other platforms.
In a email sent at the beginning of June to its streamersTwitch now says to charge them “maintenance costs” in case of departure. “We will cover the costs of 25 dollars for anyone who is ready to break their contract and move to Kick”, responds their rival on Twitter.
Other services like YouTube Gaming, Mixer (behind which we find Microsoft, but which closed in 2020), HitBox or DLive have already rubbed shoulders with the giant Twitch. Kick’s strategy is based on two mainsprings: considerably higher incomes for streamers and permissive moderation.
Advantageous revenue sharing
On streaming platforms, creators are paid with one-off donations from their viewers, but above all thanks to monthly subscriptions. For the streamers defectors, the interest of Kick lies above all in its advantageous distribution of income from subscriptions: the site offers the creator to keep 95% of the earnings. On Twitch, the percentage is lower: 70% for the creator, 30% for the platform. Since June 1, it has even gone to 50-50 over $100,000 in revenue.
Latest news: Kick would now be ready to pay now $16 per hour For streama sum disconnected from the importance of their audience.
virtual wild west
If many streamers have also taken the plunge, it is also because Kick makes it possible to retransmit games of money or chance, which is prohibited on Twitch. Some casino players like Trainwreck, TeufeurS or Scurrows thus joined the ranks of Kick. No wonder when you know that the platform belongs to the online casino giant Stake. Through Kick’s aggressive marketing, the objective here seems to be to bring maximum traffic to the online casino part of the site.
But if the platform manages to poach so many streamers, it is also – and above all – because it represents an alternative for those who have broken the rules of Twitch. This is for example the case of one of Kick’s figureheads, Adin Ross, known for having been banned at least eight times from Twitch for failing to moderate racist and anti-Semitic comments live. On Kick, he was able scroll through porn videos or even organized an interview with a Nazi in order to discuss his ideas with him.
“Five new moderators were recruited yesterday, only for the France part”, affirmed at the beginning of June a manager of Kick, questioned by the Figaro, also explaining that in the long term, nudity and underwear will be prohibited. What to reassure advertisers?
An unsustainable strategy
The apparent media success of Kick, however, remains to be put into perspective. The platform remains far behind its competitor Twitch, which still accounts for between 85 and 90% of live streaming traffic in 2023, according to figures from Streamcharts. Twitch and its 5.28 billion hours viewed between January and March crush the 58 million of Kick over the same period.
This raises doubts about the sustainability of the model. According to the figures for the last three months relayed by a Kick product manager, the platform reportedly generated $10 million in revenue from subscriptions and donations, $9.5 of which went to content creators. So she would have pocketed the remaining $500,000. “We saw profit in the first quarter, just with a strategic partnership, sworn its co-founder Ed Craven. It’s not a difficult business model to sustain if you do it right.” For his part, the stream Trainwreck, also co-founder of Kick, ensures advertising revenues would be sufficient to guarantee the profitability of the platform.
Still, for a former Twitch employee, Cyrus Hallthe situation is ironic: for streamKick uses the service from amazonthe Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS)… and therefore pays fees to the owner of its competitor, Twitch.