Ninja Casts Doubt On Streamers Heading To Kick

Kick launched as a competitor to Twitch and it quickly saw significant success. Backed by popular streamer Trainwreck, the new platform drew major talent like Adin Ross by promising streamers a far greater share of the income they generate. One Twitch streamer, however, is questioning the logic of making the move to Kick and suggesting that Kick Streamers may come to regret their decision. It seems that Ninja has been crunching the numbers and suspects the deal Kick streamers are getting is too good to be true.

Switching to Kick does seem to be a good idea on the surface, especially for popular streamers with established fanbases. The new platform has offered streamers a 95% share of the revenue they generate, meaning they get to keep almost all the money they make from subscriptions. With Twitch offering most streamers a 50/50 split of revenue, Kick seems like a great deal. Further, it seemed that things kept getting worse for Twitch last year when it made more changes to its revenue sharing that could hurt some of its biggest stars.

Streamers that did join Kick, including some who dominated in 2022, have apparently been happy with their decision and are revealing how much more money and success they're seeing on the new platform. The greater share of revenue is undoubtedly leading to bigger bank accounts, but Ninja is asking just how long that can last.

The questioning of Kick's long term success began with streamer Lowco posting on Twitter. Lowco, who specializes in helping streamers build their brands and incomes, noted that much of the income Kick streamers are making is coming from gifted subs. This, she argued, suggests that these numbers aren't sustainable. Ninja was quick to echo this point.

Been looking at this constantly. Every single streamer posting the revenue 99% of subs are gifted. It does a great job showing the possibility of how much can be made but it’s incredibly unstable. Lots of reality checks about to happen.

— Ninja (@Ninja) April 3, 2023

Responding with his own tweet, Ninja acknowledged that the numbers being posted by Kick streamers show just how much it's possible to make on the platform but argued that the income wouldn't be reliable over time. He claimed many Kick streamers will be facing "reality checks" in the months to come, implying that most of those gifted subs won't choose to renew and will simply disappear.

actually, the gifted subs to regular subs counter is a glitch at the moment. currently, all gifted subs supersede regular subs bc once gifted there is no option for community members to convert their sub into a "real" sub, so if you get gifted before you can sub, you're stuck on

— Trainwreck (@Trainwreckstv) April 4, 2023

Trainwreck quickly responded to this criticism, pointing out that gifted subs that begin subscribing on their own continue to be listed as gifted, which could obscure the true number of regular subscribers. If this is indeed the case, then the proportion of gifted subs in Kick audiences may be much lower and Kick streamers may see their income remain stable. Only time will tell, however. Ninja, at least, doesn't seem optimistic about the future prospects of Kick streamers as the year moves on.