Natural growth vs. audience expansion through stars: what top streamer concentration levels say about Twitch and Kick languages?

Loading

The impact of top streamers can fluctuate notably among various language segments, ranging from minimal influence to significant dominance. Some communities are barely affected by their presence, while such eminent content creators solely drive a considerable share of viewership in others. This article aims to explore the language dynamics of Twitch and Kick, unveiling the diverse levels of influence wielded by top streamers across different language communities. 

Top Twitch Languages — Q1 2024

To estimate the influence of top streamers on major Twitch languages, we considered the total watch time for each language and determined the portion generated by the top 10 most popular streamers. English emerged as the predominant language on Twitch, amassing over 2.475 billion Hours Watched in the initial three months of the year. However, the contribution from top streamers accounted for only 7%, indicating a relatively modest impact. The prominence of these top streamers is offset by many other content creators, probably less famous but considerably more abundant. This dynamic suggests a rich diversity of streamers within the English segment of Twitch, offering viewers a wide array of content choices.

Streams in Russian and Portuguese have amassed similar watch time, yet their top streamer ratios diverge notably — 11% for Russian and 23% for Portuguese. Despite a higher number of channels in the Russian Twitch scene, there's a lack of super influential content creators like Gaules, Baiano, or Coreano in Brazil. Conversely, the proportion of top streamers is even higher at 28% in Japanese: this underscores the substantial influence top Japanese content creators hold over trends within their language segment, posing a challenge to competitors.

The influence of prominent streamers is gradually waning across most Twitch languages. This decline is a natural consequence of the platform's continual expansion, encompassing both a growing number of streamers and viewers. Nonetheless, there are notable exceptions to this pattern. For example, top French streamers accounted for 18% of the total watch time in the language in 2023, a figure that grew to 20% in the first quarter of 2024. Moreover, there has been a slight increase in the shares for Polish and German languages.

Top Kick Languages — Q1 2024

Competition among Kick languages presents a stark contrast to Twitch — the impact of top streamers on the green platform is significantly greater. This can be attributed to two main factors: firstly, Kick is a relatively new platform and currently trails behind Twitch in active channels. Secondly, Kick's marketing strategy is centered around attracting audiences through signing top streamers. As a result, new Kick creators, though yet to gain popularity, find themselves competing with established stars from other platforms.

Predictably, English emerged as the dominant language on Kick, also becoming the most fiercely contested. Despite comprising around 41% of the top streamers, which is high compared to Twitch but relatively low for Kick, English remains the most competitive language. While popular English-speaking streamers continue to drive the majority of viewership, their influence is expected to gradually decline as the platform sees an influx of new streamers. For English, this shift is only a matter of time, given that Kick's primary audience is located in the United States.

Turkish is emerging as a potentially significant player on Kick, becoming the second most competitive language due to a recent surge in Turkish gambling streamers. The Turkish government's early 2024 regulation of gambling broadcasts in live streams led to a temporary Twitch ban in the country, prompting Turkish streamers to seek alternative platforms and multicasting options. Among such streamers, notable names include Hype, Jahrein, Elraenn, eray, purplebixi: all of them began streaming on Kick in the first quarter of 2024. 

While Turkish currently ranks second in competitiveness on Kick after English, it still lags behind Spanish in watch time. Looking ahead, it's unlikely this situation will alter. Kick has recently secured deals with several prominent Spanish-speaking streamers. Names like Davooxeneize, LACOBRAA, Ricoy, and more have already confirmed their transition to the platform. Consequently, one can anticipate a rise in the prominence of the Spanish language, alongside an increase in the influence wielded by these top streamers.

In contrast, other popular languages on Kick witness minimal competition, largely due to the dominating influence of top streamers. For instance, they hold a whopping 95% share in the Polish segment, led by gaming streamer niter. Similarly, Finnish top streamers command a remarkable 98% of the language's traffic, largely attributed to pottukoiralive. Similar cases can be observed in various languages too.

As of now, Kick's audience outreach heavily relies on top streamers, resulting in minimal competition across most languages (excluding English and Turkish). While this aligns with the platform's development strategy, maintaining unchanged top streamer influence as watch time grows could pose challenges. Sustaining natural audience growth is vital for any platform's long-term success.