For new entrants to the live-streaming arena, the sheer mass of information can be overwhelming. Platforms, streamers, gaming titles, variety content – with so many interesting trends emerging, evolving, and fading at the lightspeed rate of online discourse, it can be hard to separate out what’s important. To help you demystify this industry, we’re covering the basics of the ‘disruptor’ platform: Kick.
What is Kick exactly? In the words of its own blog: “Known for its creator-first mindset, [Kick’s] mission is to disrupt and redefine the live-streaming landscape, whilst also recognizing [its] creators’ hard work”. Naturally, trying to crack the industry with such a bold mission statement had led to the platform’s fair share of controversy – but Kick is maturing into a stable, marketable streaming platform that’s giving Twitch a run for its money.
Five Crucial Points to Understand About Kick:
- Kick’s Founding and Evolution
- Kick’s Business Model
- Kick’s Relationship with Streamers
- Kick-specific Features
- The Current State of Kick
One of the most powerful tools at your disposal is information: Access Stream Hatchet’s latest report to learn about the trends shaping live streaming.
Kick’s Founding and Evolution
When Twitch put a ban on major gambling sites back in September of 2022, one of those sites fought back. The co-owners of Stake.com, crypto billionaires Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani, decided to start up their own live-streaming site: Kick. On Kick, gambling streams would remain viable, acting as a promotional vehicle for the owners’ gambling site and pulling over hardcore slots viewers. Thanks to the co-owners’ capital, Kick’s beta had a rapid launch in October of 2022 and the platform managed to poach key talent from Twitch with massive paychecks.
The cornerstone of this strategy was Trainwreckstv: Kick’s first major streamer and an advocate for the budding platform’s values of fair pay for streamers and freedom of speech. Of course, the money didn’t hurt either: Trainwreckstv claims he was paid $360M for 16 months of gambling streams on Stake… but he was likely obligated to bet most of that money back onto Stake for content. Regardless, Trainwreckstv set the precedent that big-name streamers could expect to be rewarded for being Kick’s early adopters. Westcol, xQc, Grandmaster Hikaru, Adin Ross, and amouranth soon joined the platform with multi-million dollar contracts.
Kick has seen tremendous growth in just two and a half years. With consistent quarterly gains in hours watched, Kick hit 11% of all live-streaming viewership in Q2 2025 and cemented its place as the 3rd most popular platform behind just Twitch and YouTube Gaming. Embracing AI to accelerate growth certainly helped achieve this success, but the spark that set it all off was, without a doubt, controversy.
Take Adin Ross, who, in the early days of Kick, streamed sexually-explicit content and restreamed the Super Bowl. While he was temporarily banned for this behaviour, the slap on the wrist wasn’t enough to deter imitators keen on abusing Kick’s relaxed content moderation. From sexual content to criminal IRL conduct to viewbotting, Kick’s first year was an explosive one. However, in the words of Grandmaster Hikaru, this was just Kick’s Wild West moment: Kick has made great strides in moving away from this ‘anything-goes’ philosophy and has regained a lot of credibility through efforts to promote other forms of content.
Kick’s Business Model: Disrupting the Space
Like many other live-streaming platforms, Kick’s main source of revenue is taking a cut of profits made by its streamers. This includes ads and subscriptions, both of which are purchased/run through the site itself. But for reasons explored later, this revenue is fairly minor compared to other platforms. Additionally, Kick is bleeding money by paying for Amazon’s IVS: The infrastructure that allows it to host live stream video content. Twitch also runs on this infrastructure, but it pays 8-10x less because Amazon is its parent company.
It seems then that, at least so far, Kick is less focused on turning a profit and more interested in cash injections to boost the platform’s profile (a common strategy for start-ups). This includes major sponsorships across sports and esports, from the UFC to F1 racing with Sauber AG to football with Everton. And, of course, there are the aforementioned big-name streamer contracts that Kick invested in early on to jump start their audience.
But where does Kick get this money for sponsorships, streamer contracts, and hosting the infrastructure of a 24/7 live-streaming platform? The prevailing theory: Kick is mainly funded by profits from Stake. We should be clear here: Co-owner Ed Craven denies this and believes that “Kick’s road to profitability will surely be without the support of any affiliated entities and through direct revenue.” Stake branding is also not featured on Kick’s UI or in its pre/mid-roll ads. But Kick’s role as a customer acquisition arm for Stake seems transparent: Top creators promote affiliate links to Stake, early creators like Trainwreckstv and Adin Ross have deep ties to both platforms, and Kick was founded in response to Twitch banning gambling content. At least at this point in its lifecycle, Kick seems to rely on this symbiotic relationship with Stake.
Kick’s Relationship with Streamers
In a departure from the early days of big-money exclusivity deals, Kick has made active strides towards a more sustainable relationship with streamers. Originally, it launched the Kick Creator Incentive Program (KCIP) – an initiative designed to encourage streamers to consistently produce content and grow their fanbase in return for support from Kick itself with extra revenue. However, KCIP had a major problem: Its requirements were incredibly strict for the time, and, by our calculations, just 0.31% of all Kick channels were eligible for the program (as of May 22nd 2024). This kind of strategy might work as a higher-tier incentive on Twitch, but Kick soon realized they needed to make a more beginner-friendly program to encourage the growth of new streamers.
Kick then rebranded the KCIP into the Kick Partner Program: A far more accessible evolution of the concept. A complete summary of the requirements for both versions of the program are provided in the image above, but two key details are that participants must have streamed for at least 30 hours in the last 30 days and maintain an average of 75 viewers. While the Kick Partner Program lowered the barrier to entry, it’s actually still more stringent than Twitch after their recent changes to monetization at the start of 2025.
Regardless, this is a fantastic step towards supporting smaller streamers – one of Kick’s biggest pushes in 2025. Kick has launched multiple programs designed to market it as a platform where creators can break through the noise when compared to the crowded landscapes of Twitch and YouTube Gaming. These include:
- The Kick Road Campaign: A competition for channels with less than 100 CCVs to get the most hours watched. Winners get a share of a $50K prize pool.
- The Pitch Kick Initiative: Creators can pitch content ideas they’d like to produce and Kick will host them on the front page, massively boosting awareness for their channel while encouraging creative content.
- Kick now features reviews from smaller streamers on their landing pages, creating an encouraging atmosphere for up-and-comers rather than only promoting their big names.
Kick is now also poaching big streamers from other platforms without an upfront hefty price tag. Certain streamers like RDjavi completely moved to Kick and reaped the rewards, gaining 9.1M hours watched on Kick in Q2 2025 compared to just 1.7M hours watched on Twitch and YouTube Gaming in Q1 2024. Spreen, Luis Ormenoa27, and AQUINO saw similar boosts in viewership. These streamers can earn money in the same ways as on their original platforms:
- Pre- and Mid-roll Advertisements
- Channel Subscriptions
- Donations/Tips (though this requires a third-party service like Streamlabs)
- Affiliate Links
- Sponsorships
Another camp of creators are multistreamers: Streamers who have taken advantage of relaxed exclusivity requirements to tap into viewers across multiple platforms. Take zackrawrr for example: After starting streaming on Kick, he was able to generate $36K in just two days. Of course he’s a special case, given his already massive fanbase, but it still shows the irresistibility of multistreaming. It’s worth noting that under the Kick Partner Program, members only generate 50% of their usual revenue for any multistreams. And, across the whole site, streamers aren’t allowed to monetize certain categories, including Just Sleeping, Watch Parties, and, crucially, gambling.
Features Specific to Kick
Kick’s primary selling point is its generous 95/5 revenue split for streamers; in other words, streamers keep 95% of all revenue they generate and Kick takes just 5%. This attractive offer is the primary reason that creators have made the shift to Kick, eschewing Twitch’s comparatively brutal 70/30 split. Additionally, Kick doesn’t force streamers to run ads: Creators have complete control over when and how many ads they choose to run, including using no ads at all. Viewers love this as well, and it means smaller streamers can offer one more incentive to tune in. Co-owner Ed Craven says Kick is more interested in looking at promoting sponsorships and taking a cut rather than traditional pre-roll or mid-stream ads.
It’s not just money pulling streamers to Kick: It’s freedom. Due to Kick’s relaxed content moderation, streamers can create a wider variety of content and express views outside the norm (as long as they stay within the law, of course). When bans are handed out, the reason is usually far more transparent than on Twitch and (and shorter in duration). Like Rumble, the platform’s free speech philosophy has attracted political content, like Adin Ross hosting then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on stream.
Kick has also become home to a highly diverse range of streamers. Unlike Twitch where English-speaking streamers dominate, Kick saw the same amount of viewership come from both English and Spanish-speaking streamers from Q3 2024 to Q2 2025 (27.7% each). The Arabic and Turkish-speaking communities are also fast growing segments of the platform, sitting at 19.8% and 11.9% of all hours watched over that same time period.
The Current State of Kick
The current most popular streamers on Kick show a diverse array of older and newer talent from around the world. Looking over the past 12 months, Colombian streamer Westcol brought in by far the highest hours watched at 61M (16M hours ahead of second place Drb7h). Westcol’s annual boxing event, Stream Fighters, is the platform’s biggest drawcard, with 2024’s Stream Fighters 3 bringing in a peak viewership of 1.4M. Original Kick streamers like n3on, xQc, and Adin Ross are all still in the top 10 and have proven their staying power. To see a live listing of Kick streamers, check out our rankings page here.
Most of these streamers focus on Just Chatting or IRL content, and this is definitely reflected in Kick viewers’ overall viewership preference. Over the last 12 months, non-gaming content made up just over 1B hours watched with Just Chatting and IRL taking the first and second positions among all categories on Kick. Only GTA V and Slots & Casino content was able to even come close, with 412M and 295M hours watched, respectively. This latter category only goes to show that Kick is still trying to shake its reputation as a gambling-dependent platform. But with a new wave of streamers coming in, this looks set to change. To see a live listing of games on Kick, check out our rankings page here.
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As recently as November of 2024, Bejan Tehrani claimed Kick’s goal was still to “beat or buyout” Twitch. These kinds of open challenges demonstrate that the platform’s co-founders see Kick as more than just a promotion for Stake: It’s a real competitor in live streaming. And now with over 1/10th of all live-streaming viewership in its latest quarter, Kick has the numbers to back this up. But there’s still a lot of work to be done: Kick needs to continue improving its image to attract creators with consistently quality content and, hopefully, attract sponsors to the site. We’re excited to see how programs like Pitch Kick and the Kick Road Campaign can enable fresh blood to supercharge the platform’s growth.
To find out more about Kick’s explosive growth and other state-of-the-industry information, check out our latest free live streaming trends report:
