‘We have our understanding of what we accept or what we don’t accept’: Kick’s co-founder talks creator push and growing pains
By Alexander Lee • April 15, 2025 •
Streaming platform Kick is on a mission to onboard as many creators as possible in 2025. So far, the push appears to be succeeding — but the platform’s edgy reputation represents a challenge as it looks to scale up further.
March 2025 was Kick’s biggest month ever. The platform reached over 317 million hours watched during the month, according to numbers shared by a Kick representative, and achieved its highest-ever average concurrent viewership of 443,559 viewers.
At the moment, Kick boasts over 57 million total users, according to the representative, and is rapidly gaining market share against rival platforms such as Twitch. Although Twitch does not publicly share its total user count, the platform averaged over 2.5 million active users at any given time in 2023, according to a blog post by Twitch CTO Christine Weber. Third-party estimates put Twitch’s monthly user count at roughly 240 million.
Kick is not done investing in its efforts to scale up. Currently, the company is in the middle of its “Kick Road” campaign, a push to incentivize smaller creators to join Kick by offering a $50,000 prize pool to small creators who achieve the most hours watched between April 2 and May 23, with the winner receiving a $20,000 grand prize and six runner-ups receiving $5,000 each. In March, Kick launched the “Pitch Kick” program, which allows creators to pitch a livestream idea to Kick staff members for a chance to be featured on the platform’s front page, in addition to lowering the numerical requirements for creators to monetize their streams.
But despite all the incentives, some livestreaming creators remain reluctant to join Kick. Kick’s relatively loose content moderation policies — coupled with the prominence of right-wing influencers like Adin Ross on the platform — have left a bad taste in the mouths of some liberal creators or creators of marginalized identities.
To learn about Kick’s ongoing user growth push — and its response to some creators’ skepticism over its approach to content moderation — Digiday spoke to Kick co-founder Ed Craven for an annotated Q&A.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
On the decision to lower Kick’s monetization barriers last month
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.”
Digiday: 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 “unlock monetization for everyone” in February, Twitch’s monetization requirements are actually lower than Kick’s. To monetize on Twitch, creators need to reach 50 followers, stream for eight hours on seven different days, while reaching an average of three viewers.
On whether Kick is still in the “beta testing” stage — and its plans to monetize
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.”
Digiday: 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 over 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.”
Digiday: 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 avoiding the platform due to the presence of streamers like 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.”
Digiday: 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, Gappy and SailorTabbyCat — have told Digiday that they view Ross’s continued presence on Kick as a tacit endorsement of his content by the platform, making it unlikely that any investment in moderation would encourage them to stream on Kick. A representative of Ross’s team did not respond to a request for comment.
https://digiday.com/?p=575302
