15 April 2025
Kick, a streaming platform, is on a quest to sign up as many creators in 2025 as possible. The platform’s reputation for being edgy is a challenge when it comes to scaling up.
The biggest month for Kick was March 2025. According to a Kick representative who shared the numbers, the platform had over 317 millions hours of viewing during the month. It also achieved its highest ever average concurrent viewership at 443,559 viewers.
According to the representative, Kick has over 57,000,000 total users and is rapidly gaining share of the market against rival platforms like Twitch. Twitch doesn’t publicly disclose its total number of users, but the platform had an average of over 2.5 million active members at any one time in 2023. Blog post from Twitch CTO Christine Weber. Twitch’s monthly users are estimated by third-party sources to be around 240 million
Kick has not finished investing in its efforts for scale-up. The company is currently in the middle its “Kick Road,” a campaign to encourage smaller creators to sign up for Kick. It offers a $50,000 prize pool, with a grand prize of $20,000 and six runners-up receiving $5,000 each. Kick launched its “Pitch Kick’ program in March. This program allows creators the opportunity to pitch their livestream ideas to Kick staff for a chance of being featured on the platform front page.
Despite all the incentives, many livestreaming creators are still reluctant to join Kick. Kick’s relatively loose
Some liberal creators and creators with marginalized identities have been left with a bad taste by the content moderation policies . This is due to the prominence of right-wing influences like Adin Ross.
Digiday interviewed Kick co-founder Ed Craven in an annotated question and answer session to learn more about Kick’s ongoing push to grow its user base — and its response towards creators’ skepticism regarding its approach to content moderating. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Ed Craven:“We believe it was received really well. This program is sort of a pioneer in the livestreaming industry — it’s giving a lot of smaller-to-medium-sized streamers the opportunity to earn an income which is sustainable enough for them to focus a bit more on livestreaming.”
Warns:Kick’s unique selling point is its generous subscription revenue split, which gives 95 percent of all revenue from users’ subscriptions to their individual channels, each of which typically costs $4.99. To monetize on Kick, creators need to have a minimum average of 75 concurrent viewers for the past 30 days, as well as 30 streamed hours, 25 active subscribers, 250 unique chatters and at least 250 followers. This is a significant reduction from Kick’s previous requirements of 100 average concurrent viewers, 50 streamed hours on 15 unique days, 500 chatters and at least 1,500 followers.
Following Twitch’s decision to “ Twitch’s monetization criteria is actually lower than Kick in February. To monetize their Twitch accounts, creators must reach 50 followers and stream for eight hours seven days a week, with an average of 3 viewers.
Kick’s plans to monetize and whether it is still in “beta testing”.
Ed Craven:“We’re very close to being able to say that’s no longer the case, and that the website or application is what we’d call complete. As far as features go, obviously, we’ll continue to innovate and release a lot more for our customers. In terms of monetization, and the strategy around that, that is well and truly underway. Obviously, that is front of mind — it is the next big hurdle for Kick.”
Warns:The last time Digiday interviewed Craven, in May 2023, he said that Kick was in “beta” mode, and that monetization was not a significant focus for the company at the time. Two years later, Kick remains unprofitable, per Craven, and the beta descriptor is a useful shorthand for the Kick co-founder to reduce any pressure for the company to more aggressively monetize in the near future. He also pointed out that Kick is a privately owned company, and declined to provide a specific timeline for Kick to achieve profitability. Kick’s ownership group is not public, but includes Craven and his co-founders Bijan Tehrani and creator Tyler “Trainwreckstv” Niknam.
Craven acknowledged that advertising was a “key backbone” of Kick’s planned revenue strategy, but said that Kick was not interested in implementing more typical streaming service ad products such as pre-roll or mid-stream ads, focusing instead on the potential for the platform to glean a cut of advertising revenue by connecting brands directly with Kick creators for sponsorship opportunities, although he did not outline specific ad products in his vision.
“There’s a lot of opportunity for us to empower our creators to get sponsorships, and how Kick can be involved in that can also mean that there’s an opportunity for us to take a very reasonable and transparent cut,” he said.
On Kick’s investment in moderation during the past year
Ed Craven:“Kick has invested at least tenfold, compared to what we used to, in moderation. It’s become one of our frontrunners, in terms of where we put resourcing. Trust and Safety, especially, has become one of our larger departments internally. So, it’s continuously growing.
“The biggest thing that’s changing right now is how AI is influencing moderation. It’s something which is really helping us to gain heavy coverage. We have a really positive relationship with multiple AI moderation companies, which assist, and we also have internal AI moderation tools which we’re utilizing.”
Warns:Craven did not provide a specific number to describe the investment, but told Digiday that Kick’s increased spending on moderation was a response to a smattering of negative headlines in 2023, which focused on questionable behavior that he said represented “one percent” of Kick’s broader creator population. Leaning heavily into AI for moderation has been a hallmark of Kick since its origin in October 2022, with Craven also flagging that aspect as a strength during his 2023 interview with Digiday.
On Kick’s response to some creators who avoid the platform because of the presence streamers such as Adin Ross.
Ed Craven:“We heard that loud and clear. We look at it from a simple lens, right? Whilst Adin is streaming on Kick, he’s held to the same standards as anyone else on the platform. If he breaks any rules, he will receive a ban; he knows what our community guidelines are very well, and he understands what he can and can’t do. I think the public’s perception of individuals shouldn’t influence our moderation, in the sense of what happens on the platform.
“We have our understanding of what we accept or what we don’t accept, and then we just stay consistent to that. And sometimes, that understanding might not overlap with 100 percent of people in the community, or 100 percent of people externally — but I think we’ve made a pretty clear stance on that, and we’re very happy where that stance is at the moment.”
Warns:Craven made it clear that Kick takes moderation seriously. However, the prominence of creators such as Ross on the platform could represent more of an intractable ideological challenge than a moderation issue. For better or worse, some creators — including Twitch streamers such as Halfmoonjoe (19459079). Gappy SailorTabbyCat ( ) told Digiday they see Ross’s continued appearance on Kick as a tacit approval of his content from the platform. It is therefore unlikely that any investment made in moderation will encourage them to stream via Kick. A representative from Ross’s team didn’t respond to a comment request.
https://digiday.com/?p=575302
