Some time ago we compared the streaming platforms Twitch and YouTube Gaming. YouTube gaming has made several moves to catch up with Twitch in the streaming platform market. For example, they are acquiring two very big streamers from Twitch — TimTheTatman and DrLupo. These two streamers, since 2021, have established themselves on YouTube and it looks like they are not going to make another change. Other services have made similar moves, including Mixer, which signed up Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek and Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. Still, those familiar with the matter know that the hype around Mixer disappeared faster than it appeared, and the service itself announced the end of its operations.
Does Twitch have to worry about rivals in the streaming platform market this year? It’s hard to give a clear answer here, but new streaming platforms are emerging despite Mixer's failure. KICK, which we will be writing about, is already fully operational with a “beta” signature, while the other has announced a plan for its operation — 7tv (a popular Emote Platform for All that allows users to add custom-sized emoticons, gif emoticons, nickname color changes to their channels, which appear, among others, on Twitch).
KICK
This startup has received the most support from one of today’s most popular streamers Trainwreck.
In his longer Twitter post, he spelled out what exactly he doesn’t like about Twitch’s approach to the streamers themselves. Here is a key excerpt from his post:
Twitch takes the highest percentage split of any platform in the live streaming world. At 50%, every streamer on Twitch will only receive $2.50 of each subscription, and less if they’re not in a first world country. I don’t believe it’s right to take such a high percentage of the work that a streamer does. Twitch does nearly no marketing for streamers, no discovery, and limited help in building their business. Those streamers only succeed from the blood, sweat, and time they put in themselves. Twitch’s only role is as a website host. Given their contribution, it is absurd that they take 50% of our income. A few months ago Twitch announced that the 70/30 splits streamers were hoping for are not coming. They said it’s too expensive to run their website and that those costs have to pass onto the creators. Yet platforms like Youtube maintain a 70/30 split on subscriptions without issue. But I think 70/30 is still not enough — and that we can do even better.
You can find the full statement by clicking here
As you can easily deduce, Trainwreck does not like, among other things, the distribution of compensation between the creator and Twitch. He believes that the work that streamers put in is most simply underestimated. Behind his support for the new platform, there may also be another case for his activities. Gambling was a big part of Trainwreck’s content until Twitch blocked the ability to stream gambling — which is allowed on KICK.
In terms of compensation, KICK announced an auspicious offering and profit sharing between the platform and its streamers. For example, the split from channel subscriptions would be 95/5, where 95% is the streamer’s salary.
In addition, today Treinwreck announced that KICK is working on more ways to fund streamers regardless of their audience — it’s called KICK Creator Program.
The Creator Program is simple. You get paid for each hour you stream. A formula will pay each streamer out based on:
A. The number of hours you stream.
B. A flat rate based on Kick’s advertising CPMs (budgeted by us until ads take over).
C. The average viewers you have.
D. Viewer demographics and engagement.We’ll have more details regarding this program in the near future.
Again, you can read a full statement by clicking here
Have any interesting steps been made to convince streamers to choose KICK? Well, they are still trying to attract both viewers and streamers. For example, the very well-known artist Drake had the pleasure of hosting his live broadcast on KICK. This shows that the startup is quite serious about marketing matters.
You can still find the archived broadcast on the artist’s official channel: Drake’s Channel
Healthy competition is always good, would you agree with us?
We don’t know if the planned changes at Twitch are related to competitors’ moves or not. However, they are not indifferent and have announced a number of changes in the ongoing year. Mainly they will concern with the monetization we have mentioned many times.
Here are some of the key points already coming to the Twitch platform this year:
- Giving you more options to earn
- New tools that reduce the effort to promote your stream on and off Twitch
- Making running ads easier and better for you
- Improving how and where ads show up on Twitch
These are just the highlights, which are much more developed and detailed on Twitch’s official website. If you’re curious, of course, we encourage you to read the full description of what to expect on the Twitch platform in the coming year. Click here for detailed information.
To show you how strong a position Twitch has built, we will present you with charts showing how the streaming market was divided, in terms of hours streamed by streamers and hours watched by viewers. Data is from 2021, so there is no presence of KICK on the graph.
As you can see, Twitch’s position is really strong and to this day, it’s really hard to beat them. In fact, we are not surprised by this, to tell the truth, ourselves in our daily duties as an agency — it is Twitch itself where we look for new, perspective streamers with whom we are eager to establish partnerships. This might be reflected in their long-standing presence in the market, and believe us or not, but the community present on Twitch is simply not replaceable at the moment by anyone else in the world of streaming platforms
What are your thoughts? Will anyone be able to catch up with Twitch? Let us know what opinions you have on the subject!
