Kick founder refutes “burning money” claims, says they turned profit in Q1
KickKick co-founder Ed Craven has denied that the new streaming platform is “burning money”, claiming they turned a profit in their first quarter.
Despite launching just months ago, Kick has quickly grown to rival some of the biggest platforms in the live-streaming industry.
Notably, they’ve gone toe-to-toe with Twitch, battling to take some of their top creators — offering lucrative contracts and a hefty 95/5% subscription revenue split.
Although recently a former Amazon engineer has raised concerns about the platform’s long-term sustainability, arguing that Kick is “subsidizing” and “burning money” paying Amazon for their streaming services.
However, in an interview with Kick content creator Big E, the site’s co-founder Eddie has denied that they’re burning money, and have in fact seen profit.
Kick co-founder says platform already turned profit
“I’ll be honest with you right now, Kick has only been around for three to four months, right? We saw profit in Q1,” the co-founder claimed during an April 15 interview. “We saw profit in Q1 just through one strategic partnership.
“It’s not a difficult business model to sustain if you’re doing it correctly. I think there is a way to go about this. I think as long as people understand there is a long-term roadmap out there that we’re very comfortable with and doubling down on, I really look forward to seeing what’s achievable.”
Ed continued: “I think all the people sort of doubting it is kind of interesting, and I think they’re already going start doubting it less every month that goes by.”
“I think naturally, people are skeptical for the right reasons, and we’ll just continue to prove them wrong. Taking people’s subscription money isn’t what makes live streaming sustainable. That is the biggest misconception.”
The co-founder also clarified that the company isn’t overpaying AWS for its server costs, adding that right now, there are “absolutely no issues” with Kick’s sustainability. “We’re making two to three-year deals with people right now,” he said.
Currently, Kick is beginning to see massive month-on-month growth. According to website stat tracker SimilarWeb, Kick.com received 58 million visits in March — a massive increase from just 13 million in January and 29 million in February.
However, they’ve still got long to go until they battle Twitch for the top spot, which averages around 1 billion site visits per month.