[wozniacki]

Also not mentioned is the recent rise of Ad-Free ( yes completely AD-FREE as in not a single ad ever! ) platforms like KICK.com [1][2]

Amouranth used to stream exclusively on Twitch.com but now has moved mostly to Kick.com and streams the majority of her time there.

In this respect, Twitch's draconian content policing needs mentioning. People would receive week-long bans for unnamed reasons or super petty things. They rode the woke train as hard as they could and it was a sight to behold! They've recently slightly relaxed some of their disallowed content policies.

[1] Kick - Statistics & Facts https://www.statista.com/topics/11394/kick/#topicOverview

[2] https://www.similarweb.com/website/kick.com/

[raydev]

Remains to be seen whether Kick can last long enough to get to profitability. It's certainly advertiser-poison, since what you call "draconian content policing" is closer to what advertisers want to see.

[1905]

> Also not mentioned is the recent rise of Ad-Free ( yes completely AD-FREE as in not a single ad ever! ) platforms like KICK.com [1][2]

Their ad is pushing their own Stake.com gambling site and having contracts with streamers to gamble on stream

[local_crmdgeon]

Does this read like an ad to anyone else?

[rchaud]

Ad-free....for now.

Like how Uber sold itself on "no need to tip" and there's a big fat tip screen on the App.

[dathinab]

Kick has the same cost or more then Twitch (they use the exact same infrastructure under the hood,it's a service sold by Amazone to Twitch and others).

They saved some cost on building the UI etc. by well semi-stealing it from Twitch after a leak but that's just a saving bootstrapping cost not long term operation cost.

When it comes to general advertisement friendliness they are far worse then Twitch, i.e. where Twitch struggles to sell AD slots Kick probably wouldn't even bother.

Like many other start up like companies Kick is not currently profitable and lives from investor capital hoping to make it through.

Kick is deeply intertwined with gambling and many streamers on it frequently are in legal gray area when it comes to gambling law in the EU, they tried to somewhat get way from it but AFIK failed for now.

Kick has many streamers which are often seen as ethical problematic, like being associated with neo-Nazis, making it a no go for most advertisers. But also many streamers stay away from it for that reason and also (maybe more so) the gambling reason.

So AFIK Kick isn't likely to make it longer, except maybe as legally and ethically questionable gambling paltform.

[SleepilyLimping]

Kick is narrowly avoiding the Truth Social/Gab "this is the platform where all the people banned from Twitter are" stink by basically throwing money at non-problematic streamers until they can't refuse the payout. The streamers saw what happened with Ninja during the Mixer shutdown (getting bought out of his contract, going straight back to Twitch) and probably want that to happen to them.

[stale2002]

> So AFIK Kick isn't likely to make it longer, except maybe as legally and ethically questionable gambling paltform

You can't just say they are going to fail if we disclude the main reason why they are going to succeed!

There is a ton of money in gambling. That's why it's a very serious competitor.

They have a rare luxury of being able to tell advertisers to shove it, if they can make all their money doing gambling conversions.

[dathinab]

the problem with gambling is its often not legal to advertise it too much, so many of the streams doing so either are in a legal gray area or outright illegal in many EU countries

worse a lot of gambling is deeply intertwined with organized crime in many countries

so if they as long as they have gambling they basically have no much chance to succeed in many areas which are not gambling on a wider scale and might outright bared from operating in some countries without 18+ age verification, too

[coffeebeqn]

I doubt kick is making a profit either