On June 16, the announcement rocked the streaming world. Félix Lengyel, better known as xQc on the live video streaming platform Twitch, will stream on Kick, a competing site. From the top of his almost 12 million followers, the Canadian is one of the most influential videographers on Twitch. By attracting such a headliner, Kick hopes that its audience will trickle down to its entire platform and attract other content creators. However, affording xQc has a price: 100 million dollars (91.15 million euros), for a non-exclusive two-year contract, according to THE New York Times. An amount that questions both the origins and the ambitions of this site, which was still little known a few weeks ago.
A platform driven by gambling
Founded on 1er December 2022, Kick is operated by the online casino site Stake. The latter is established in Curaçao, an autonomous state of the Kingdom of the Netherlands located in the Antilles. Gambling regulations are very flexible. In France, Stake has been blocked by the National Gaming Authority (ANJ) since July 2021.
On Twitch, the broadcast of several online casinos, considered by the platform as infrequent, has also been banned since October 2022, after the rumble of some streamers. On the front line, Pokimane, Canadian streamer with more than 9 million followers. On September 19, 2022, she expressed her deep disagreement with the presence of gambling on Twitch. Because if Stake and consorts are banned in France, this is not the case worldwide. “If Twitch still hasn’t banned gambling streams by Christmas week, we should get a bunch of streamers together, and everyone go on strike”, said Pokymane. A threat that the main headliners of the platform did not finally have to carry out: the hashtag #TwitchStopGambling going viral, Twitch was forced to give in.
A boulevard has therefore opened up for another more flowing platform with gambling. On Kick, the promotion of the online casino, and therefore of Stake, is considerable. Adin Ross, the platform’s leading videographer by average viewership (around 45,000 viewers on average over the past month, according to StreamCharts), makes it one of its main contents. In general, since the launch of Kick, the “slot machines and casino” category has never left the top 3 of the most watched categories on the site.
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