Kai Cenat is the biggest streamer on Twitch in the last 365 days: He has accumulated 128 million viewer hours and gained 6.2 million followers. That is all supposed to come to an end now.
This is Kai Cenat: Kai Cenat has been the most successful streamer on Twitch in recent years. He has only been streaming since January 2021. His recipe for success is to plan streams like events and to do marathon streams to play games in one go, such as Elden Ring.
These streams have a huge impact. A fan event triggered a riot in 2023. Kai Cenat streams “relatively little” compared to other big streamers. With 1,678 hours, he was online almost 600 hours less than the largest German streamers like Papaplatte or EliasN97, who are ranked 11th and 12th in the world.
Kai Cenat has achieved 128 million viewer hours in the last 365 days; nobody else has even come close. Furthermore, he has gained 6.2 million followers, which is also an absolute record. Cenat and Jynxi are the only English-speaking streamers in the top 5 on Twitch; otherwise, they speak Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese there.
Kai Cenat and IShowSpeed are the rising stars on YouTube and Twitch in recent years. IShowSpeed is significantly more controversial:
Kai Cenat says he’s quitting Twitch to become a professional basketball player
That was his last stream: Kai Cenat played through “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice” in a new marathon stream and took 46 hours to do so. During the stream, an average of 40,290 people watched.
At the end of the stream, fans were actually expecting him to present the next project, but instead, he said:
The thing with gaming and streaming is cool. But it’s time for me to step it up a gear. Chat, I will stop streaming for the time being.
He will try to become a professional basketball player.
To the fans who thought this was a joke, Cenat said: He will be drafted into a league in 3 days. Which one exactly, he does not reveal.
Fans react confused and amused
This is the reaction: No one seems to be taking this very seriously at the moment. The idea that someone would step away from such success to do something where they have little chance is considered absurd by most.
Kai Cenat is also only about 1.70 m tall. That does not seem to predispose him for a professional career in basketball. Furthermore, he repeatedly says in the statement “for the time being,” which does not sound like a final farewell but rather as if he is just preparing a new event. Perhaps he wants to promote a new basketball game this way.
Update 30.9, 1:09 PM: It is now known what lies behind Kai Cenat’s statement and how it ended: The number one on Twitch says he is quitting streaming to become a professional basketball player – It is not going well
