Ezan Charo 
The streaming platform Twitch recently lost their No. 1 streamer.
The French-Canadian streamer known as xQc, the biggest streamer on Twitch, just recently signed a contract to the rival streaming service known as Kick to stream non-exclusively for them for $100 million for two years. That is INSANE.
This is one of the biggest transactions in online entertainment history. This is professional sports athlete levels of revenue. So why does this matter? Well for starters, the term “stream non-exclusively” means that xQc is not bound to stream his content on Kick alone – he can still broadcast his content on other platforms such as Twitch and YouTube and not face any repercussion, which is mind boggling. But I suspect xQc will start gradually shifting his fan-base over to Kick, because he has no reason to be with Twitch anymore.
Kick’s income split for their content creators is 95-5, meaning that streamers take 95% of their earnings and Kick only takes 5%. Twitch on the other hand has a tentative split of 50-50, formerly 70-30, so Kick allows streamers to take a significantly larger amount of their earnings for themselves, dealing a massive blow to Twitch’s integrity.
But here’s the thing – where is Kick getting this money from? Twitch is owned by Amazon so it makes sense how they’re funded graciously, but Kick is primarily operated by a man named Ed Craven, nicknamed a “crypto kingpin,” who’s affiliate with one of the most successful gambling companies in the world, Stake, who’s known for splurging absurd amounts of money on projects. The fact that Twitch failed to keep their biggest streamer with their godlike amounts of money for a contract worth more money than LeBron James’ two-year $97.1M contract, is absolutely ridiculous.
It doesn’t seem like much will change for now, but this may mark the beginning of the end for Twitch as a streaming site.
What do you think? Send me a message and let me know.
By Ezan Charo, Senior, ChiArts
Twitter: @digitalwarlock8 / Instagram: @ezancharo
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