Twitch wants a bigger cut of popular streamers’ revenue.
The platform says the “vast majority” of streamers earn 50% of revenue from channel subscriptions, which start at $4.99 per month and give subscribers access to things like special emotes and chat modes. Twitch takes the other 50% for itself.
But not all streamers are subject to that revenue share.
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“[F]or some time we did offer standard agreements with premium subscription terms to select streamers as they grew larger,” Twitch president Dan Clancy said in a Sept. 21 blog post. “This isn’t something we’ve talked about publicly, but such deals are common knowledge within the streamer community.”
The “premium subscription terms” gave signing streamers 70% of subscription revenue, with Twitch taking a 30% cut.
Twitch stopped offering these terms to new streamers over a year ago, Clancy says.
And now it wants to make changes to previous agreements.
“For these streamers still on these premium deals, we’re adjusting the deal so that they retain their 70/30 revenue share split for the first $100K earned through subscription revenue,” Clancy said. “Revenue above $100K will be split at the standard 50/50 share split.”
That’s not $100K per year—it’s $100K total. Once a streamers hits that lifetime threshold, a further 20% of their subscription revenue will be taken by Amazon-owned Twitch forever.
According to Clancy, approximately 90% of streamers who have premium subscription agreements will not be affected “at their current revenue.”
“For those who are affected, we wanted to make sure the impact was minimal—not just by giving them ample time before the deal goes into effect—but also by offering an alternative way to earn revenue,” he said.
The change goes into effect June 1, 2023. As for the “alternative way to earn revenue,” Clancy means Twitch’s ad incentive program, which offers streamers monthly lump sum payments if they agree to broadcast for a specific number of hours, while running a specific amount of ads during those hours.
Reports that Twitch wanted to get rid of the 70/30 split have been around since the beginning of this year, along with rumors that it was considering softening the blow by removing the exclusivity clause that keeps partner and affiliate streamers from broadcasting anywhere else during the terms of their agreements.
