HAS KICK’S STREAMING PLATFORM ALREADY DIED?
Kick.com came on very strong when it first went live on a global scale in 2022. Now that it has been online for over a year, I’m eager to look back at some of the bold promises and broad predictions made for the platform. Now the initial hype has passed, it seems traffic has slowed down, social buzz has moved on, and ultimately, Kick.com has all but died a grisly death. It seems it has faded away out of relevance after just twelve months.
It might be that the platform is just yet to gain traction in earnest. It’s arguable that the original boom was nothing more than early adopters hopping on that hype train. It could also be that everyone has gotten wise to Kick’s aggressive expansion tactics. Realizing that there aren’t as many opportunities to make the big bucks on the platform as they first thought. There were some huge acquisitions that fizzled out. The numbers are down. Kick’s socials aren’t growing much.
Is Kick.com already dead?
HAS KICK KICKED THE BUCKET?
In early 2023, Kick.com was growing immensely fast. It was acquiring enormous streamers with $100 million contracts and promising small streamers the world. It suffered from a string of controversies, overcame some but the scandals just seem to keep surfacing. How much has this actually effect their numbers though? Let’s look at some data.
According to Esports Charts & Streams Charts, Kick’s viewership was boosted in September 2023, reaching a peak concurrent viewer count of 981,385. But, it’s worth mentioning that around 800,000 users out of that count were watching one exceptional creator. Elsewhere during the month, the peak channel count fell by 7% and the number of active channels fell by 6% overall. In August 2023, the peak viewer count fell by 25%, the peak channel count by 56%, and the average number of live channels by 24%.
Most staggering is their viewership compared to Twitch. In January 2024, Kick total viewership hit a new high at 132 million hours. In comparison, Twitch was at 1.9 Billion. Kick might still be growing but at a much slower pace than the overall live streaming industry.
THE END RESULT
Kick’s growth has slowed immeasurably on social media platforms – like Twitter – and marketing seems to have taken a huge dip. It seems that some of those monumental acquisitions haven’t paid off, either. xQc’s arrival was heavily promoted. His Twitch streams are roughly keeping pace with those on Kick, with a similar average viewership. It’s been declining on both platforms though.
Elsewhere though, it’s not a strong comparison. At any given time, Kick has around the same total viewership has Twitch boasts in a single category. The biggest Twitch streamers dwarf the whole platform.
Loading up the Kick.com interface, you’re frequently greeted by a lacklustre front page. The whole thing toting strange streams as their best of the best: streamers watching copyrighted content, someone playing Warzone, and a e-girls wearing skimpy clothing. There were a few more channels recommended to me – slots, two ‘Just Chatting’ streams, and someone carving something out of wood. In the top live categories, the game sitting in the number one spot was PUBG, with just under 8 thousand viewers. An irrelevant number compared to the Just Chatting and Gambling sections.
At the same time, on Twitch, GTA V boasted 38,000 viewers and was far from the most popular game.
Ultimately, I found that Kick.com offered up a bleak welcome, it didn’t interest me or capture my attention, and I honestly can’t see why anyone would choose it over Twitch right now.