Twitch has plenty of competition in the livestream economy. CEO Dan Clancy isn’t worried

Business leaders are often reluctant to speak about their competition. It’s rare that you’ll hear Netflix’s Ted Sarandos talk about Disney+, or Skims’s Jens Grede speak about Spanx. It’s uncouth and unhelpful, a good PR will tell you.

That’s why it’s utterly refreshing when Dan Clancy, CEO of the ultra-popular livestreaming platform Twitch, throws out opinions on his competitors with abandon. “[TikTok] was the first platform that didn’t just copy Twitch,” Clancy tells Fast Company. “YouTube just made Twitch on YouTube. Facebook just made Twitch on Facebook. Kick downright copied the site.”

It helps that Clancy doesn’t see these other livestreaming platforms as direct competitors. He sees Twitch as a general player in the market of attention, putting the company in competition with every social media app, not just the live ones. “Really, what we’re doing is competing for your time,” he says.

But these other livestreaming platforms are growing, and growing quickly. According to Stream Hatchet, Twitch still holds onto 61.1% of the market, but YouTube Gaming is on the rise with 22.9%. Kick, SOOP Korea, and CHZZK all have single-digit market shares, making them small but impactful. And, per Streamlabs, Twitch occupies 82.3% of the total hours streamed, but only 60.8% of the total hours watched.

Twitch also struggled in 2024. Fresh off a second round of layoffs and a shutdown in South Korea, it looked like Twitch was in decline. Still, they maintained their dominancy over these direct competitors. Can that grip hold?

How Twitch got (most of) their top streamers back

Just a few years ago, Twitch was the only livestreamer in town. YouTube introduced their Gaming platform in 2015, but didn’t meaningfully invest in expansion until a few years later. Facebook Gaming and Mixer burned bright in the late 2010s, only to be effectively shut down. Kick didn’t launch until 2022. Almost all of these platforms came with something directly detrimental to Twitch’s business: exclusivity contracts.

Google was the biggest offender with these contracts, coaxing Twitch creators to stream exclusively on YouTube’s platform with hefty bonuses. Ludwig, Dr. Lupo, and LilyPichu all took these contracts. Myth, a major Fortnite streamer on Twitch, was YouTube’s biggest catch for a reported $4 million. But most of these defectors, including the four mentioned, have since returned to Twitch as their contracts lapsed.

“LilyPichu is the best example, because she liked the fact that she was getting this check, but she was so looking forward to the day when the contract ended, because then she could come back,” Clancy says. “It’s because of that sense of belonging and home. That’s not just for their viewers, it’s also for them.”

Twitch isn’t completely absolved from the last five years’ exclusivity drama. They built an exclusivity clause of their own into the Monetized Streamer Agreement, making it more difficult for creators who cross-stream to make money. But they’ve since rolled that back, which Clancy sees as a benefit. He takes a creator-first approach; people come to Twitch for their favorite streamer, not for Twitch itself. Thus, anything keeping streamers off-platform (like the exclusivity clause) is bad for business.

“If there’s a creator you watch on TikTok and they stopped posting content for two weeks, you probably wouldn’t even know,” Clancy says. “Whereas on Twitch, your affinity is with the creators that you have come to know. That’s one reason why creators that are focused on livestreaming prefer Twitch. People are showing up for them, not just to swipe.”

Twitch’s take on content moderation

Where YouTube Gaming quietly tries to swipe creators, Kick is more vocal about being the anti-Twitch. They loudly tout their 95:5 revenue split with creators, which is fare more generous than Twitch’s 70:30. And, importantly, Kick emphasizes its looser moderation policies.

Kick was co-founded by a Twitch streamer, Trainwreckstv, who almost entirely moved over his popular Grand Theft Auto account so that he could avoid Twitch’s policy against cryptocurrency gambling. Other big accounts, like Buddha and xQc, moved most of their content to Kick so they could gamble.

Others take refuge in Kick after being kicked off Twitch. In the platform’s Community Guidelines, Twitch has specific policies against “hateful conduct” and “harassment.” But live-streaming is a popular outlet for political radicals, making these guidelines controversial. Adin Ross, for example, was banned from Twitch in 2023 after an on-screen chat projected slurs onto the stream. Ross ran to Kick—where he later hosted President Donald Trump.

Clancy says Twitch won’t loosen up moderation practices to compete with Kick. In fact, he wagers, most of the creators shifting to Kick didn’t move for the looser moderation at all. “While they may have said that’s the reason, I think every single one of them were given a contract where they were making a lot more money than they would organically make,” he says.

Clancy is quick to point out that Twitch’s moderation exists to make sure the platform isn’t “toxic.” That’s why they banned crypto gambling, and why they have policies against hate and harassment. But here’s where I push him. “Hate and harassment” are broad and flexible terms. On Meta platforms, it would’ve been considered hateful to call an LGBTQ+ mentally ill in 2024; now, it’s just free expression. So how firm are Twitch’s policies?

“If you don’t like what somebody is saying, then don’t watch their channel,” Clancy says. “There are certain things that are off limits, but I don’t think that has changed. . . . We have the same policies, and I think most people still would consider that saying those words is hateful.”

Twitch’s expansion plans

One of the oddball entrants to the livestreaming game has been TikTok. Other mobile-first platforms had already launched streaming; celebrities have been over-exposing themselves on Instagram Live for years now. But Instagram Live is a monologue, not a marketplace. On TikTok, creators can now monetize their livestreams, either through receiving “gifts” from viewers or from affiliate marketing. That revenue model happens to look a lot like Twitch. Take those popular “NPC” streamers begging for roses on TikTok Live; five years ago, they might have been shilling for Twitch bits.

Of course, TikTok’s future in the U.S. is anything but a sure thing. I ask Clancy about his thoughts on the TikTok ban. There would be pros and cons to a market without TikTok, he claims. “[TikTok] exposed new viewers to livestreaming, which at some level helps Twitch,” he says. “[But] if they’re not around, then there’s people that might be interested in streaming that we should be reaching out to.”

That’s just one way that Clancy can get more creators on Twitch. Throughout our conversation, he gleefully lists the wide variety of streamers they host. Did I know T-Pain was on Twitch? Or what about the popular TikToker James Seo, who Clancy convinced to join Twitch while at a party for MrBeast? But these fresh faces are fundamental to Clancy’s approach, the reason why he thinks Twitch can continue its dominance. When they have the creators, the viewers will follow.