Twitch is still the biggest livestreaming platform in the world by gaming hours watched. That part has not changed. What has changed is that the platform is now in the middle of a slow but consistent decline that the most recent quarterly numbers no longer let anyone explain away. Watch hours fell for the third consecutive quarter. Revenue dropped 8 percent year over year to $1.8 billion. Daily visitors are still strong at 35 million, and monthly users sit around 240 million, but the underlying engagement trend is moving in the wrong direction. The competitor most often blamed for the slide is Kick, the gaming focused platform that pays creators 95 percent of subscription revenue compared to Twitch's roughly 50 percent share for non partners.
The market share math tells the story. Twitch still leads gaming with 54 percent of total gaming content hours watched, which is the part of its business that almost no other platform can touch. YouTube Gaming holds 24 percent. Kick has grown to 11 percent of the gaming vertical alone, with most of that growth happening in the last 18 months. The platform that nobody had heard of three years ago now controls a meaningful slice of the gaming livestream market, and the curve is still pointing up. The fastest growing piece of Kick's audience is in fighting games, slots and casino streaming, and just chatting categories where Twitch's content rules have been the most restrictive.
Kick's strategy has been straightforward and ruthless. Pay creators almost everything. Loosen the content moderation rules. Sign exclusive deals with high profile streamers. The platform's 95 percent revenue share is more than double what Twitch and YouTube offer, which has been enough to convince a steady stream of established creators to switch or at least multistream. xQc, Adin Ross, Trainwreckstv, and Amouranth all moved or partially moved their primary streams to Kick over the last two years. Each of those moves came with reported guarantees in the seven and eight figure range, which Kick was willing to pay because each top streamer brings 15 to 25 percent of their Twitch followers with them in the first six months after a public switch.
The slot streaming and casino category is the controversial part of Kick's growth. Twitch banned most unlicensed gambling streams in 2022, which pushed a major segment of high earning streamers off the platform. Kick has positioned itself as the home for those streams, and the category now drives a meaningful portion of total platform watch hours. The pitch to streamers is simple. Kick will not deplatform you for content that Twitch would have removed. Whether that is a sustainable competitive moat or a regulatory time bomb is a question that the platform has not yet had to answer in court. Several state regulators are reportedly looking at the gambling stream advertising disclosures.
For Twitch, the strategic problem is that even moderate revenue share improvements probably are not enough to stop the migration. Twitch increased its top tier subscriber payout from 50 percent to 70 percent in late 2024 for streamers hitting a high revenue threshold, but the platform still takes a much larger cut of subscription dollars than Kick. Amazon, which owns Twitch, has signaled that it is unwilling to push the share much higher because of the impact on platform economics. The 95 percent that Kick offers is only viable because the platform is privately held, well capitalized through its connection to crypto exchange operator Stake.com, and willing to operate at a loss while it builds market share.
The other thing happening to Twitch is YouTube Live's quiet expansion into territory Twitch used to own outright. YouTube has the advantage of an existing audience for every gaming creator who already has a YouTube channel, and the platform has been improving its live tools steadily over the last 18 months. Several streamers who used to do all their content on Twitch now run YouTube Live as the primary platform with Twitch as a secondary stream. The audience on YouTube tends to be larger but less engaged. The audience on Twitch is smaller but tips and subscribes at higher rates. For most streamers, the optimal answer in 2026 is to multistream and let the audience decide where to follow.
For independent creators thinking about which platform to commit to, the math is not as simple as picking the highest revenue share. Twitch still has the largest discovery surface for new gaming streamers, the most established subscriber culture, and a community feature set that Kick has not fully replicated. Kick has the better economics on the back end and a faster path to top tier earnings if the streamer can already bring an audience. YouTube Live has the integration with the broader YouTube algorithm and the ability to convert live viewers into long form video subscribers. Most full time creators in 2026 are running on at least two platforms simultaneously to hedge.
The longer term question is what happens to Kick if its growth slows. The platform recorded its first quarter over quarter viewership decline since launch in the most recent reported quarter, with the drop driven mostly by a quieter period for viral moments rather than any structural problem. But the 131 percent growth rate that has fueled its rise is going to be impossible to sustain forever, and the 95 percent revenue share only works as long as the platform's parent company keeps writing checks. If that funding ever slows, the entire competitive proposition tightens. Twitch is betting that it will outlast Kick's ability to subsidize creators. Kick is betting that it will reach scale before that happens.