Kick, the quick-growing livestreaming platform created by Stake.com co-founder Ed Craven, really, really wants to challenge Twitch for top spot in the “Go Live” industry.
It’s reportedly offered tens of millions of dollars to streamers like Kai Cenat and IShowSpeed in an effort to get them to switch platforms, has pitched itself as a haven for people hit with Twitch’s ban hammer or denied partner status, and earlier this month announced “KickCon,” which we’re pretty sure is just a semi-elaborate trolling maneuver targeting Twitch’s own annual convention.
But under all this noise, how is Kick actually doing in terms of viewership?
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According to StreamElements and its analytics partner Streams Charts, Kick has more than 4x’d its monthly number of hours viewed, going from 12.8 million in January to 13.3 million in February, 35.8 million in March, and 51.8 million in April.
Probably unsurprisingly, the largest chunk of those watch hours was generated by Andrew Tate fanboy Adin Ross: 6.5 million in April 2023. Ross’s runner-up was TrainwrecksTV, who left Twitch when it cracked down on gambling company-sponsored streams, and promised to create his own platform that would “revolutionize streaming.” (His possible co-founder/leadership role in Kick’s organization is not quite clear.)
In the same time period, Kick’s number of active channels jumped from 9.1K in January to nearly 70K in April.
Kick’s most-watched content categories include Just Chatting as #1 (16 million watch hours) and Slots and Casino as #2 (14 million). Pools, Hot Tubs, and Bikinis are #4 (2.4 million). Five games made the top ten categories: Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Fortnite, and Apex Legends.
If you’re wondering how Kick’s viewership stats compare with Twitch’s…Well, they’re not close.
Twitch reportedly has around 8 million streamers go live every day, and according to StreamElements generated 1.784 billion watch hours in January, 1.645 billion in February, and 1.556 billion in March. Its top streamer, xQc, had 12 million watch hours in March 2023.
Still, StreamElements co-founder and CEO Gil Hirsch says these numbers show Kick has potential.
“It takes time to determine if a new platform will have long term success since there eventually needs to be an audience for the middle class of streamers and not just the stars,” he said. “Kick’s current beta is showing impressive momentum in terms of channel and viewer growth, so the question now is if they stay on track will they be rolling out more engagement, monetization, and moderation features and be able to effectively serve a larger creator pool and global audience with high resolution, low latency video.”
