The Battle for Viewership: How Kick Is Competing with Twitch for Top Streamers

The Battle for Viewership: How Kick Is Competing with Twi...

By Jocelyn Alano August 20, 2024 01:27

Photo by Twitch

Over the past decade, we have seen tremendous growth in live streaming from being just for early adopters to becoming mainstream entertainment. The 2023 data illustrates Twitch as the dominant service in this area, with around 140 million monthly active users. Founded in 2011 and acquired by Amazon three years later, Twitch has long been home to a diverse community of live streamers across categories such as gaming, music, and the creative arts. Its deep feature functionality, including incorporated chat, channel points, and subscription tiers, has made it the top destination for viewers looking to get into the moment with live creators.

Although Twitch is a dominant platform, it is much debated due to its monetization policies, community guidelines, and the handling of controversial content like gambling. It has allowed new contenders to take market share and kick a young platform, but it is rapidly becoming popular among streamers and viewers.

Kick Platform Overview The Kick platform project.

Launching in 2022, Kick is a newcomer to the live-streaming scene. Stake Casino recently announced their new Twitch-killing stream platform, Kick, a fresh take on streaming content creation and exploring monetization opportunities. Kick's creator-facing part is its 5% revenue cut, compared to Twitch's 50/50 split for most streamers. This lucrative revenue model has caught the attention of creators who want to make more money.

A user-friendly platform, Kick has an intuitive interface that provides fresh tools to interact with any audience dynamic overlays and real-time analytics, which live broadcasters will benefit from the most. The platform even prioritizes community involvement, encouraging streamers to better interact with their fanbase. By the time Kick faced each other in mid-2023, it was a lot higher, with 235k live streams daily, which shows how rapidly they grew and their appeal.

How Kick Is Attracting the Best Streamers Back to Live Streaming

This emphasizes some streamers for becoming disgruntled with Twitch policies, which Kick has used as an opportunity to steal top talents in various tactics. Here are some key tactics:

Good Revenue Share Model

Per Kick's numbers, 70:30 is the real split for creators who qualify under its Partner Plus program. This means streamers can keep more of their subscription dollars than Twitch will let them retain from the standard. One of the main targets for a financial reward is particularly appealing to more established streamers who depend on subs as their No. 1 income.

Flexible Monetization Options

Kick also features a variety of monetization methods beyond subscriptions, including tipping and sponsorship. One of the larger reasons many content creators turn to Kick is that they get 100% off their donations from viewers on streamers. This starkly contrasts Twitch's work, where ads and other forms of monetization can cut into earnings.

Focus on Niche Content

It has developed a niche with content that Twitch itself bans, notably relating to gambling. Highlighting casino and gambling content, the platform has succeeded in drawing streamers previously under restriction by Twitch. It works as a way for Kick to distinguish itself and cater to different audiences.

Transparent Sundarbans

Kick wants to deliver transparency in its community guidelines, where Twitch has faced backlash for what seems like random bans. Kick wants to attract streamers who care about creative freedom and an accommodating community that promotes its own open space.

Partnerships with Top Streamers

Kick has signed several Twitch stars in the past, such as Tyler "Trainwreck" Niknam and Félix "xQc" Lengyel, along with Kaitlyn "Amouranth" Siragusa. In addition to adding credibility to Kick, these partnerships bring their large fanbases onto the platform, which results in increased viewership and engagement.

Its Effects on Ratings, Revenue, and Audience Share

This epic showdown of Kick vs. Twitch is now beginning to change the world, so revenue streams and market share are also seeing seismic shifts between these two providers.

Viewership Trends

The quick expansion of Kick is illustrated in its viewership numbers, which reflect a 404% climb in hours observed from January through April this year. That bump tells us that Kick is bringing in users, probably those who like to gamble and consume some niche stuff. But Twitch is still much bigger on an audience level, which means Kick would struggle to compete purely in terms of bums on seats.

Revenue Dynamics

It's also possible that Twitch may need to review the number of ways it supports and rewards its streamers so as not to eliminate some of its biggest content creators because new platforms are clearly more attractive than they have been in years. This could significantly alter revenue dynamics in the long run, causing other streamers to switch platforms if they see an opportunity for greater paydays on Kick.

Market Share Changes

Twitch is still the king, but Kick has been taking some of its market share. Kick's appeal will presumably also be its presence on major streamers' platforms, effectively advertising to Twitch's existing user base by luring big names away. As other creators start to look into different platforms, the competition will obviously shift.

What The Viewership War May Mean in the Long-Run

Increased Innovation

It will be interesting to see new features and monetization models evolve as each platform competes for top streamers, viewers, etc. Both companies (Kick and Twitch) may grow their platforms to attract creators, but this seems like it might clash with the idea of a streaming site striving for fast-paced novelty.

Shifts in Content Creation

The growing success of Kick could lead to new content being made on a wider array of taboos, many currently forbidden by Twitch. That could translate into a wider selection of movie genres and styles, drawing more portions of the audience.

Potential Consolidation

Should Kick continue to grow its customer base, the live-streaming market could consolidate further, with a few small platforms able to offer a compelling alternative. This would result in a more consolidated market with a few that dominate the landscape.

Lessons and Expectations for the Future

For now, it will only get more heated between Kick and Twitch. Predictions of the live-streaming future

A couple of possible options or solutions are for Twitch to offer creators a more flexible set of monetization alternatives to capture talent. and Kick may want to alter its revenue-sharing platform if it wants access.

Specialized Streaming: If Kick grows with niche content, we may see more specialized streaming categories, which could fragment the market into several different universes of streamers.

Community Engagement: Given it's a social streaming platform, both services will probably emphasize community engagement and have features built around this concept (e.g., streamer/viewer interaction tools).

Kick has been changing the live streaming world, and viewers have previously only had other platforms, such as Twitch, to turn to. In the end, if Kick can build more similar great features and better monetization for top streamers to carry on moving forward, although they did so by steering away from Twitch, it's something that will sooner or later help them get up there -and in response, Twitch would also need to make some adaptation out of sight. Live streaming has a bright history and future, infinite possibilities for all creators and viewers.

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