xQc signs $100 million deal with Kick, a new fledgling Twitch competitor

Streaming platform Kick wants to make its mark in the billion-dollar ad market, and has poached one of the biggest names in streaming.

xQc has signed an incredibly lucrative two-year agreement with Kick, a new fledgling streaming platform launched in 2022. The non-exclusive deal is worth nearly $70 million, with incentives that could raise the deal's worth to $100 million. xQc's agent Ryan Morrison tells New York Times reporter Kellen Browning that the deal is bigger than those signed by pro athletes.

"This is more than most professional athletes and megastars. This is one of the highest deals in entertainment, period."

xQc is currently holding its debut live stream on Kick and at the time of writing the view count remains broken, reading that there are anywhere from 0 viewers to 40 viewers despite the chat whizzing by in a flurry of messages.

"Kick is allowing me to try and do things I haven't been able to before. I'm extremely excited to take this opportunity and maximize it into new creative and fresh ideas over coming years," Felix xQc Lengyel said in a statement.

The news echoes Microsoft's futile efforts to build up its ill-fated Mixer streaming platform with similar deals. Years ago, Microsoft signed lucrative multi-year deals with streamers like Ninja and Shroud, but that was not enough to save the streamer from ultimately shutting down.

This is an interesting time for the announcement. Twitch just revealed its controversial Partner Plus program, a new incentive that offers streamers 70% of subscription revenues, but only if they have 350 concurrent premium subscribers for 3 months straight, and the metric does not include gift subs or Prime subs. The Partner Plus program has also been criticized for its threshold of $100,000 as many streamers are calling for Twitch to offer a blanket 70-30 split for all revenues, including subscriptions and ads.