Twitch’s rival Kick has been increasing its audience very quickly in 2023, raising its viewership numbers by 300% within only three months. The platform, which is still in Beta right now, still has a long way to go before it could rival Twitch’s numbers, but its viewership is increasing at an astoundingly quick pace.
Kick was originally launched at the end of 2022, and it promised to rival Twitch by being a “creator-first” platform. To convince more people to join its services, Kick offered a 95-5 revenue split, way more than Twitch’s 50-50, and also more loose community rules, especially regarding sexual content and gambling, which often led to many of the ever-constant Twitch bans. The streaming platform has attracted a few big names so far, such as Adin Ross, which helped to contribute to its absurdly quick growth.
Now, Kick achieved quite an important milestone in numbers, more than doubling its viewership in a single month. According to StreamElements, Kick’s viewership has increased hugely since January, when considering how many hours of video were watched. The service had 12.8 million hours in January and 13.3 million in February, but it quickly jumped to 35.8 million in March, and then 51.8 million in April, an impressive growth of over 300% when compared to the first month of the year. The number of active channels has also increased, going from around 9,100 in January to almost 67,000 in April, despite community backlash over certain Kick features, including problematic usernames.
Gil Hirsch, the CEO of StreamElements, observed that it’s still too early to be sure whether Kick will get long-lasting success, but that the numbers are truly impressive, and that the platform is gaining momentum, possibly due to its non-gaming content, which is also attracting audiences. Another obvious reason for the increase in numbers was the release of the Kick mobile app, which happened in March. Many people watch streams on their phones, and this option certainly impacted the growth.
However, despite the boost in popularity, Kick is still struggling to attract some of Twitch’s biggest talent. For instance, Amouranth recently declined the chance to switch platforms. Amouranth, despite a recent ban that lasted only a single day, is one of the biggest Twitch streamers, and decided not to join the platform, citing concerns about the lack of content restrictions that Kick has, as well as being afraid to lose some special benefits that she gets from Twitch.
Source: StreamElements