Kick co-founder mocks Twitch after boasting about key viewership metric
Kick/TwitchKick co-founder Bijan Tehrani took a shot at Twitch after revealing how his platform overtook its rival in a key demographic, albeit briefly.
Since its launch, Kick has been focusing on one-upping Twitch and bringing some of the purple site’s talent over.
Numerous big names from across the streaming world have joined Kick including xQc, Amouranth, NICKMERCS, and even chess legend GM Hikaru.
However, while the platform has since dialed back on signing creators, it has picked up steam in other ways.
On October 28, Kick co-founder, Bijan Tehrani, shared a screenshot from the stat-tracking site KickvsTwitch, revealing that in the past seven days, Kick had overtaken its rival in Spanish-speaking viewership.
“The WestCol effect,” Tehrani said, referring to the Colombian streamer who broke Adin Ross’s viewership record from when he streamed with President Donald Trump.
Back on October 20, WestCol hosted a fight event called Stream Fighters 3 and had a whopping 1M people tuning in.
“That is crazy,” someone wrote in response. “I wonder what the executives have to say on that side of the fence.”
To this, Tehrani replied: “I think they got bigger problems.”
Tehrani was likely referring to a series of controversies involving Twitch throughout October, such as when the platform issued an apology for “inadvertently” blocking Israeli and Palestinian users from creating new accounts on the platform.
October also saw a massive 40% increase in signups on Kick as users grew increasingly frustrated at Twitch for its policies on VTuber attire that require the creators to cover up their avatars.
Amid the backlash, Rumble’s CEO Chris Pavlovski even predicted that Amazon would shut down or sell Twitch within two years.
As the streaming wars wage on, we’ll have to see if Twitch bounces back or if Kick can maintain this momentum into 2025 to take an even bigger slice of the viewership pie that Twitch has dominated for years.