Twitch’s grip on the live-streaming world continues to loosen as upstart competitor Kick celebrates a major breakthrough in Q2 2025, crossing the 1 billion hours watched mark for the first time. The platform, which debuted in late 2022 with a bold promise to rivalTwitch, has steadily gained traction thanks to its higher payouts and looser content restrictions.
When Kick entered the streaming scene, many saw it as a short-term stunt that would crash and burn like Mixer. But the Stake-backed platform quickly flipped that narrative by making some aggressive, calculated moves, like locking down big-name streamers from rival sites. Adin Ross, xQc, and Amouranth were among the first to sign on, and that alone drew a lot of attention. What really stirred things up, though, was the massive money thrown into the deals.xQc’s $100 million Kick contractstood out and shook up the entire industry for a while.
Now, thosehigh-stakes bets from Kickappear to be paying off. In Q2 2025, Kick crossed a major milestone by hitting 1 billion hours watched in a single quarter for the first time. Data fromStreamChartsshows the platform’s viewership climbing 28.1% since the beginning of the year. That growth helped Kick regain 3.74% of the streaming market only in Q2. Meanwhile, Twitch keeps slipping, as the Amazon-owned service has posted drops in key numbers for three quarters straight, with another 0.9% loss in market share recently.
Kick’s Creator Strategy Delivers Results
StreamCharts identifiesTwitch’s multistreamingpolicy change as a major factor - allowing creators to go live on multiple platforms at once has chipped away at its exclusivity and sped up its decline. Kick co-founder Bijan Tehrani addressed the platform’s recent momentum and looked back at how it all started. He pointed out how Twitch banned his co-founder Ed Craven and cut creator revenue shares, which helped fuel the creation of Kick. At the time, critics dismissed the idea and said Kick “could never rival Twitch.” Now that Kick has passed 25% market share for the first time, it’s clear the space is shifting fast.
YouTube Live dominates livestreaming overall, accounting for more than half of all hours watched in Q2 2025, with a massive 14.83 billion hours viewed in the quarter. Kick’s fast growth is big, but not all that surprising, considering its aggressive creator payment model. In early June, popular streamerAsmongold said just two streams on Kick earned himmore than a full month of Twitch income, a sharp reminder of the financial pull behind Kick’s rise.
