Since Kick’s launch, the neon green K has become recognisable across the livestreaming industry. Kick’s second year has been explosive, and the site is the only platform growing quickly enough to be considered a potential future competitor of YouTube and Twitch. Since setting itself up in the livestreaming industry, Kick has expanded to the LATAM and MENA regions, which have overhauled the platform's viewership and cemented its place on livestreaming’s global stage.
Kick’s second year was far more successful than their first. Initially, the platform attempted to enter the North American and European markets by signing various industry-leading English-language creators. However, in their second year, Kick found much success by convincing and signing various LATAM and MENA streamers to join their platform.
Kick’s 2024 strategies: expanding to new markets and push into esports
In 2024, Kick convinced many top streamers from Argentina and the MENA region to join their platform. Spanish-speaking creators like spreen and davooxeneize brought their large viewerships to Kick, quickly amassing hundreds of thousands of followers. These Latin American streamers are some of the most successful Kick signings of the year, along with Arabic-speaking signings like ilyaselmaliki and abodby. Along with established Arabic channels like drb7h, who joined Kick last year, these channels have quickly gained hundreds of thousands of Followers each.
Many of these creators have joined up because of Kick’s new Creator Incentive Program, which helps streamers to create and make the content they love. First announced in late 2023, this program elaborates on Kick’s lucrative 95/5 subscription model for streamers: creators under the program earn an income directly from Kick. The program is open to all streamers who satisfy some conditions, such as at least 100 Average Viewers.
LATAM and MENA demographics are less saturated than North American livestreaming, and Kick has had an easier time becoming a standard platform in these regions. For example, Kick’s Spanish-language watch time is currently comparable to Twitch’s Spanish viewership, but Twitch is still leading far ahead in terms of English-language Hours Watched. In total, Kick’s second year of operation since Dec 5, 2023, has generated 2.097B Hours Watched for the platform. In comparison to Naver’s CHZZK, another new yet massive livestreaming platform, Kick received 260% more watch time than the Korean platform in the second half of 2024.
A major contributor to Kick’s growing watch time in 2024 has also been its expanding esports department. Kick partnered with tournament organizers throughout the year to arrange an official ad-free broadcast on their platform; this included Kick entering a deal with BLAST to broadcast the BLAST Premier season from the Fall Groups 2024 onwards, and partnering with PGL for coverage of the Copenhagen Major. Kick’s immediate advantage over other livestreaming competitors is their ad-free and high-quality stream for esports viewers.
Throughout 2024, Kick’s esports broadcasting grew in watch time by 254%, thanks to their deals with esports organizers and bringing esports professionals onto the platform. In their expansion to Latin America, Kick attracted the Peruvian Dota 2 scene, a small but stable viewership source for esports events. A combination of former and current Dota 2 professional players like benjaz, Kingteka, and Matthew are just some of the Peruvian streamers who contributed to Kick’s esports growth in 2024.
Kick’s entries to Turkish and Arabic-speaking markets also were a significant driving force behind esports growth. In fact, even Asian markets slowly picked up in 2024. Thai and Filipino audiences are just some of the Southeast Asian markets showing promise through esports broadcasting on Kick. These markets are also primed for mobile gaming, which could be a focus for Kick’s esports broadcasting in the future.
Kick Account Manager and retired Counter-Strike esports professional Oliver “DickStacy” Tierney explained in an interview with Dexerto a couple of months ago that Kick is looking to support more local esports events than major competitors Twitch and YouTube, and wants to “expand our esports offering through all different aspects”. By entering the esports market, Kick’s ad-free experience and lucrative revenue split are legitimate reasons for many esports broadcasters and streamers to move to the green platform.
In the interview, Tierney noted that Kick’s lack of Drops, similar to Twitch, is a missing part of their esports broadcasting at the moment. Aware of the problem, Kick staff are looking to make esports viewing on Kick just like major platforms Kick and YouTube, only ad-free. Kick’s major expansions to the LATAM and MENA regions have strengthened its growth, leading to a sizeable overall growth of the platform for 2024.
Kick’s Second Year Viewership Results
Kick’s viewership for their second year marked a 142% increase compared to their first year. Even more impressively, Average Viewers increased by close to 149%, with 258K concurrent viewers watching the platform on average at any point during the year. These positive dynamics in viewership are largely due to Kick’s new-found and sizeable Spanish, Arabic, and Turkish-speaking audiences.
North American audiences may soon become a minor audience in comparison to Kick’s global scale. Active Channels, meaning those with at least 1+ viewers, increased by 52.5% in the second year of Kick, as the green platform continued to sign more top creators and attract new audiences. Kick’s third year of operations will likely see them continue to focus on LATAM and MENA, where audiences are still exhibiting strong positive viewership dynamics.
Kick may also attempt to enter some Asian regions, continuing to experiment with entering new markets after their success in 2024. As we explored above, these Asian markets are showing promise in Kick’s esports broadcasting side, and Kick staff mentioned in a recent Kick Talk podcast featuring Nazar Babenko, a product manager from Streams Charts, that expanding into Asia would be a massive opportunity for Kick.
In any case, North American and European audiences are slowing down on Kick, and MENA and LATAM streamers are gaining traction. This can be observed in the top Kick streamers for its second year, especially the viewership dynamics compared to the past year.
Top Kick streamers for 2024
While American creators like Adin Ross, N3on, and xQc appear at the top of our rankings, these creators accumulated large amounts of viewership thruoguhout the entire year. The Saudi Arabian streamers, drb7h and sxb, were less active in the year, but maintained viewership even larger than xQc’s. Kick also recently signed many of Argentina’s top livestreamers, like El Spreen, Davooxeneize, and Brunenger.
These Spanish-speaking creators were late additions to Kick’s second year, but are already placing in our monthly recap top 10 rankings. Coming into 2025, they will likely continue to grow and become some of Kick’s most popular creators. Adin Ross has already announced his official departure from Kick, and other North American and European creators may seen themselves outgrown by LATAM and MENA peers.
Colombian westcol was the most popular Kick streamer of the entire year, having generated 62.07M Hours Watched for Kick. He was one of the first large Spanish-speaking creators to join Kick, and he has grown alongside the platform as more and more Spanish-speakers sign up to the neon livestreaming platform. He, and compatriot mrstiventc were two of the fastest growing streamers on this ranking, alongside the two Saudis.
Ac7ionman, roshtein, and mellstroy271, were three of Kick’s most popular creators for its second year. These streamers often appeared in our monthly recaps, and were constantly accumulating high viewership when they streamed.
As Kick moves into its third year of operations, the sky is the limit. The platform has experienced rapid growth in LATAM and MENA regions, and now, it may turn its eye to attempting some new market entries in 2025. For the moment, Kick is shifting its focus away from the North American regions, similar to competitor YouTube, who stopped offering contracts to streamers, largely from North America and Europe. Streams Charts will continue to track viewership data for Kick as it grows to become one of the livestreaming industry’s newest major platforms.
