Some of the biggest German casino streamers are now on the new Twitch competitor Kick – seemingly with great success. Something must be wrong, says Berlin opinion blogger and gambling critic Kilian “Tanzverbot” Heinrich.
What’s the deal with Kick? Kick is a relatively new platform that aims to compete with the established streaming giant Twitch. The platform attracts users with a 95 percent share of paid subscriptions and a relaxed set of rules.
Gambling on platforms that have been banned by Twitch is allowed on Kick. This is no surprise, as investigative YouTuber Coffeezilla exposed a connection between the streaming platform and the controversial online casino Stake.
Many streamers who had deals with Stake have moved to Kick, where they are still allowed to show the site.
However, such a move doesn’t happen overnight; streamers have to “pull their viewers over”: they continue to stream “permitted” content on Twitch and then show gambling on Kick, hoping that more and more fans will follow them to the new platform.
However, Tanzverbot, who has been critical of gambling streams for some time, finds the numbers on Kick suspicious. Because not even Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the biggest streamer on Twitch, has managed such a feat.
You can see Ninja’s unique career in our video:
Tanzverbot claims that cheating is happening on Kick
What does Tanzverbot say? He accuses the streaming platform Kick of manipulating viewer numbers to generate hype. Streamers would reach approximately the same number of viewers as they did previously on Twitch. His conclusion: There must be “view bots” in use that artificially inflate the viewer numbers.
He had previously shared his observations on Twitter. In a tweet from March 5, he suggested that streamers on Kick might not have as many viewers as on the much larger Twitch:
He elaborated on this observation in a stream, noting that it simply doesn’t work that way. The Berliner explains that he was most shocked by how some people defended the gambling streamers under his post: Of course, they had as many viewers; they would be pulling their fans over.
Come on, do you have no idea about internet behavior? How can one think that if you have 50,000 followers on Twitch, you can just take 50,000 people over to a foreign platform? It doesn’t work that way, […] this has been proven everywhere in the past.
Not even the big Ninja managed that
Why doesn’t it work? Tanzverbot explains that switching to a new platform is not that easy. He experienced this himself with the streaming platform “Hitbox”. Not even Ninja, who was absolutely huge on Twitch at the time, was able to maintain his viewer numbers on the Microsoft platform Mixer:
I felt it firsthand that it doesn’t work: Hitbox, after the third stream only half as many viewers. Someone like Ninja, who at his peak had 150,000 viewers, 200,000 – 300,000 viewers, switched to Mixer, and only 5,000 people watched him.
In fact, the Fortnite ace Tyler “Ninja” Blevins reached over 617,000 viewers during his absolute peak. However, the hype around him has since died down.
You can also watch a recording of Tanzverbot’s stream on YouTube.
While Tanzverbot was discussing the suspicious numbers on Kick in the stream, Kevin “Orangemorange” Bongert, one of the largest German gambling streamers, joined as a viewer. He donated 100 € to Tanzverbot to be able to accuse him of drug abuse in the attached message.
Shortly thereafter, he published the address of the Berliner in his own stream:
Twitch: Tanzverbot says Orangemorange made his address public, accusing him of drug abuse
