Last Wednesday night on the 9th of August streamer Kai Cenat went live on Twitch for the first time since the incident involving himself and a giveaway that got out of hand at Union Square, New York. The content creator returned to a warm welcome from his fans and addressed what happened during the mass gathering of people, which some have deemed riots.
Cenat announced on the days coming up to the 4th of August that he would be giving away PlayStation 5 consoles in Union Square along with other Twitch streamers. He had planned to make the event a bit of a game show, giving away various prizes such as headphones, gaming chairs, and computers to fans who could correctly answer questions about YouTube and the live-streaming sphere.
Kai’s announcements for this giveaway were viewed millions of times by fans and other live-streaming enthusiasts who were keen to win some items at the giveaway. By the early afternoon of the day thousands of people began converging at Union Square and the New York Police Department started to mobilise officers to deal with the large unexpected crowd. The NYPD called on an estimated 1000 members of the force to deal with the crowd, which was confirmed to be at least 2000 people but police estimate somewhere between 3000 and 5000 people were present.
Cenat was taken into police custody and charged with inciting a riot and unlawful assembly and police have criticised Cenat for his lack of planning for the event and failure to get proper permits from the city for the assembly. It is currently unclear if Kai Cenat is having the charges actively pursued against him or how he will deal with this.
Return to Twitch
Almost a week after the incident, Cenat went live on Twitch to open a conversation with his fans about what had transpired. Although only live for 20 minutes to quickly address his fanbase, the streamer received 37.1K hours of watch time. He also achieved 213.3K peak concurrent viewers, which is a highly impressive number for any streamer and yet it is not even Kai’s most popular stream. Just over a month ago, Cenat reached 306.2K Peak Viewers during his Fourth of July stream.
Kai Cenat addressed his fanbase, admitting that he now realises the power he wields as one of the biggest influencers in live-streaming and content creation. He expressed his disappointment in anyone who became destructive and reiterated that none of what transpired was his intention and he does not condone the actions of rioters. Although he was careful to not directly admit any wrongdoing, possibly due to an ongoing police investigation, he did admit that if he does a giveaway again in the future he will talk to the right people and do it the correct way.
He also confirmed that he has an upcoming court date on the 16th of August, and will be taking a break from streaming due to the court appearances. Although Kai might take a break from streaming for this, he still remains one of the most-subscribed streamers on Twitch and his fan base is not going anywhere. A break from streaming might even give a boost to Kai’s viewership when he finally does return.
Although Kai Cenat is the most recent name in streaming controversy regarding fan actions and crowds, he is not the first influencer to experience this kind of event. In 2022, KSI and Logan Paul were hosting an event to celebrate the launch of their collaborative sports drink, PRIME Hydration, in the UK. Collectively, these two have over 47M Subscribers on YouTube and their collaboration makes them one of the strongest duos in the live-streaming industry.
The fan turnout for the launch celebration turned out to be much higher than expected, as KSI and Logan Paul posted videos of them standing on a balcony above a massive crowd of fans. The UK supermarket chain ASDA was supposed to host an event for fans to celebrate PRIME landing in their stores, featuring KSI and Logan Paul giving away merchandise and meeting fans. However, the crowd that turned out to the event was much larger than ASDA expected and they were forced to close the store to manage access and eventually cancel the meet-up entirely as they were unequipped to deal with such a large crowd.
Even VidCon has made the decision in recent years to ban unplanned fan meet-ups, as they can quickly turn sour if the crowd gets out of control. In live-streaming it can be very easy to forget the sheer size of an audience when simply reading a number off of a viewer count, but when these creators go into the real world for meet-ups and events, the size of their fan base is truly mind-boggling.
