Twitch CEO Daniel Clancy thinks Kick is making a big mistake

Twitch is by far the biggest name in the live streaming world, but it faces competition from Kick, whose strategy has involved paying popular streamers big money to exclusively use their platform.

CEO of the Amazon-owned Twitch, Dan Clancy, said in a recent interview that he believes Kick is making a “complete mistake” by poaching streamers for exclusivity deals.

Although Clancy believes Twitch is “hands down the best platform,” Kick has been able to sign huge names like xQc, Adin Ross, and Amouranth with multi-million dollar deals.

In the interview, with live streamer NateGentile7, Clancy stated that he believes other platforms should be focusing on encouraging new faces into streaming rather than simply moving existing stars from place to place.

“We need live streaming to grow”

“You know, TikTok doesn’t try to get our streamers, they go and try to get new people streaming,” continued the CEO, ‘I think it’s a complete mistake to say, ‘Oh, the live streaming market is fixed, I’m just going to try to get what the other guy has.’

“And then as soon as [Kick] stops paying them, they’re going to come right back. That happened with Mixer, that happened with YouTube. They were paid, and then they came right back.”

The live streamer Ninja signed a deal to stream on Mixer, the Microsoft-owned platform exclusively, but returned to Twitch when Mixer shut down in 2020.

Clancy said that instead of worrying about other platforms and enticing streamers across to Twitch, his focus was on adding and improving features on Twitch to aid streamers already there. In May they added a new discovery feed with vertically aligned clips that mimics TikTok or YouTube shorts. This allows viewers to preview channels without sitting through pre-roll ads without knowing if they will enjoy the content.

Featured image credit: Twitch