More than a half-dozen high-profile livestreamers started broadcasting solely on Twitch last year after contracts with Alphabet Inc’s YouTube and the upstart Kick streaming platform expired. — AFP
Video-game influencers are returning to Amazon.com Inc’s Twitch en masse after seven- or eight-figure deals to livestream exclusively on other platforms ended.
More than a half-dozen high-profile livestreamers started broadcasting solely on Twitch last year after contracts with Alphabet Inc’s YouTube and the upstart Kick streaming platform expired.
The gaming celebrities returned to a combined 25 million Twitch followers, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News. Several more are livestreaming simultaneously across multiple platforms – not just the one they were contracted to.
On Wednesday, gaming celebrity Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter became the latest to come back after five years and three contracts on YouTube.
Twitch originated the livestreaming market in 2011 and nurtured a class of multimillionaire celebrity gamers who interact with fans, and earn money from subscriptions and ad revenue. For years, Microsoft Corp, YouTube and Meta Platforms Inc attempted to compete with Twitch by luring away top talent with lucrative deals.
One streamer, Ali “Myth” Kabbani, said he received US$4mil from YouTube over his two-year contract. Fortnite celebrity Tyler “Ninja” Blevins left Twitch in 2019 for an exclusive deal with Microsoft’s Mixer for reportedly as much as US$30mil, setting off a talent war.
But the spigot slowed around 2023. That year, Kick, an offshoot of crypto casino company Stake, offered a one-year contract valued at an estimated US$10mil according to Forbes to Nick “Nickmercs” Kolcheff, who had spent more than a decade streaming exclusively on Twitch. Now, Kick too is “not chasing big signings”, co-founder Bijan Tehrani wrote in an email.
“History says those types of deals are always temporary in nature,” Twitch chief executive officer Dan Clancy said in an interview. “No business wants to perpetually lose money. They’re paying them more than what they make from it.”
Viewers didn’t necessarily follow the celebrity creators to their new homes and some of the stars even saw their live audiences shrink. Twitch also stopped requiring its top streamers to work exclusively on its platform, allowing creators to test the waters at YouTube or TikTok Live without walking away from their homes. Today, 2.4 million people are viewing more than 100,000 live channels on the site at any given moment, according to data from TwitchTracker.
Twitch, which was bought by Amazon in 2014, has a strong gravitational pull as the originator of the video-game livestreaming format. Over 2024, more than two-thirds of livestreaming hours were spent on Twitch. Many of the streamers who came back to Twitch were already stars on the platform.
“Twitch is a kingmaker,” said Frank Fields, associate director of talent for management firm RTS. “On YouTube, that same level of discoverability doesn’t exist,” he added. “YouTube has a lot of other benefits, but it’s not a kingmaker system.”
Kris Lamberson, a member of esports group FaZe Clan who goes by FaZe Swagg, earned what he calls “generational wealth” from his 2022 YouTube contract. His father had two jobs and his mother worked the night shift. YouTube’s offer for him to livestream shooter game Call Of Duty there allowed him to help his mom retire. Commenting on a video titled “Why I Left Twitch for YouTube”, fans supported his decision.
In August, Lamberson posted another video titled “Why I’m Leaving YouTube”. Over time, he said he felt that YouTube wasn’t prioritising long-form live content, rather it favored short-form video that could compete with ByteDance Ltd’s TikTok. “YouTube put a lot of their resources into Shorts. Before it was really livestream-focused,” he said in an interview.
YouTube’s primary business is recorded videos. Lamberson worried that they might tempt fans away from his livestreams. Twitch offers both short-form and recorded video products but is more tailored to a livestreaming experience.
“YouTube isn’t going to prioritise the streaming side,” Hofstetter said in a recent video explaining her shift to Twitch.
While the livestreaming industry is bigger than ever, experts question whether platforms got their money’s worth from the exclusive contracts. Microsoft’s Mixer and Facebook Gaming have fizzled out, although YouTube Gaming and Kick increased the number of concurrent viewers in 2024.
Twitch’s competitors face other challenges. For example, about 20% of the 25 most-viewed livestreams in YouTube’s live gaming category involved people playing slot-machine games, including one called Fortune Tiger, according to a recent analysis of Playboard data. Although the streams might attract as many as 90,000 apparent viewers, only about 20 might send a message in the YouTube chat every minute, suggesting limited engagement. A YouTube representative didn’t respond to a request for comment.
On Kick, streamers who benefit from large content deals may not receive the advertising revenue they were accustomed to on Twitch. Kick doesn’t currently have a robust advertising network. Many of its more popular personalities are more irreverant and less appealing to advertising sponsors than those on competing platforms.
“For its community and platform to continue to grow, Kick will have to build a community where brands and game developers want to spend with them,” said Brandon Freytag, chief executive officer of online influencer company Loaded.
Kick’s Tehrani said 2024 was the site’s biggest year yet – especially in the Spanish-speaking market.
“Over the next two years, we expect even more creators to choose Kick and embrace multi-streaming to maximise their engagement and revenue,” he said.
While the goal of the lucrative talent deals was to lure viewers into new ecosystems, Twitch’s Clancy said many dedicated Twitch users just stayed on the platform and looked for new content.
“The idea of, ‘I’m going to sign this big contract and all these viewers will follow’, is not the way it works in this space,” he said. The number of average channels livestreaming on Twitch concurrently has grown every year since 2022, according to data from TwitchTracker. The average number of live viewers, however, is shrinking.
Clancy said he “always had confidence” that the streamers would return to Twitch. Blevins, for one, returned after only a year at Mixer after the site folded.
Clancy met with Kolcheff when the streamer, who had nearly 7 million followers on Twitch, was in discussions to move to Kick for an eight-figure contract. Over dinner, Clancy says he told Kolcheff: “If this is a good opportunity for you, then take it. I’m excited for you. And when that opportunity goes away, I’m looking forward to having you back.”
Late last year, Kolcheff announced he was returning “primarily” to Twitch. – Bloomberg
