Last week we reported the sudden addition of xQc to the new Kick platform. This surprise may have caught many in the community by surprise had Twitch not recently updated their branding guidelines before swiftly backing down on them a day afterward. Over the weekend, popular Just Chatting streamer Amouranth also declared her intentions to move to Kick via her Twitter account.
Along with this, popular World of Warcraft and variety gamer, Asmongold, also signaled to potentially joining the new platform after the Twitch branding guidelines announcement. As three of the most recognizable names on the platform, it has many wondering — Is Twitch really in trouble?
One of the most critical factors to this scenario is that it’s unlikely the upcoming streaming deals will be “exclusive,” meaning any or all of the entertainers can also still stream to Twitch in addition to Kick. In the case of xQc, this was confirmed via the New York Times article that broke the news on the landmark agreement. While the details of the deal are unknown, we can assume that it included some level of streaming commitment to Kick.
In the case of some top streamers, leaving Twitch’s lucrative advertising and subscription revenues behind entirely would likely not be the best business move — leaving a window open for the number one streaming platform, Twitch, to fight back to retain its top entertainers, if it wants to.
However, this seems unlikely as Twitch has let go of other top streamers in the past few years, including Ludwig, Valkyrae, Dr. Disrespect, and various other iconic gaming entertainers, bringing their massive audiences with them to Twitch’s main competitor, YouTube.
Breaking Down the Numbers
It’s also important to mention scale and the size of the streamers potentially leaving. Indeed, xQc is one of Twitch’s largest streamers, maintaining on average a 70,000+ concurrent average viewer count at any given time. Asmongold is similarly as large, streaming to an average audience of 65,000 viewers.
However, streamers like Amouranth, who may be well-known to everyone in the community, actually doesn’t maintain too large of an audience, averaging only 6,400 viewers at any given time. Twitch itself has around 2.4 million viewers at any given time, meaning that if the trio left the platform, it would only account for a little more than 5% of all concurrent viewership — and that’s counting on the fact that there aren’t overlapping fans and that all of the streamer’s viewers follow them to a new platform, which is unlikely to occur at a 100% rate.
This all being said, over the past three years, Twitch has seen a steady decline in overall viewership. While the platform is still able to maintain an average of over 30 million visits per day, the site has seen a steady decline in overall viewership from 2021 to 2023, shrinking from a high of 2.78 million concurrent viewers on average to 2.46 million today.
However, there are various reasons why this might be, from post-pandemic pullback to the growth of competitors like YouTube to top streamers leaving; there’s a decent chance it’s a confluence of factors rather than one specific thing.
Like other industries, more competition is typically a good thing as companies are forced to compete for entertainers and viewers — making the experience for both parties better. With such solid viewership and a multitude of other entertainers on the site, it’s unlikely Twitch will go anywhere soon, but we’ll keep you updated in our news section.
