Twitch CEO Dan Clancy clarifies the platform does not make money through Kick after Pokimane’s controversial statements went viral

Twitch’s CEO Dan Clancy had an hour-long conversation with prominent esports personality Jake Lucky on June 23, 2023. After discussing various aspects of the industry, the latter took the opportunity to inquire whether the Amazon-owned platform profited from Kick. For context, the situation was first brought up by popular internet personality Imane “Pokimane”on June 17, 2023, when she responded to those who claimed that Kick was “taking over”after signing Felix “xQc.”

Pokimane argued that people did not understand how things worked and that Kick uses the services of their competitor, with the latter ultimately profiting off them:

“Respectfully, people that say stuff like this, you don’t understand that Kick makes Twitch money. Like, Kick is using Twitch’s services. And, if Twitch really wanted, they could just stop giving these services to Kick. But right now, they’re just sitting back like, ‘Thanks,’ I guess. Honestly, I don’t really care that much. Yeah. Well, AWS is Amazon and Twitch is Amazon. So, in a way, it is.”

Dan Clancy provided a “simple answer”for this and said:

“So, does it make… first of all, it’s part of AWS. So, the simple answer is… it doesn’t make Twitch money… because AWS is not a part of Twitch.”

“We are fine with that”- Dan Clancy on Kick using Amazon’s services built around Twitch’s technology

The conversation continued with Dan Clancy explaining what Interactive Video Service (IVS) is and what it does:

“For those that don’t understand… what we call IVS – Interactive Video Service, is a service of AWS. It was built off of Twitch. And Kick is using them right now. This was very, like, AWS does this. They generalize things and let other people use them.”

https://player.twitch.tv/?video=1853135060&time=1h3m30s&parent=www.sportskeeda.com

Timestamp: 01:03:30

Dan Clancy went on to say that Twitch did not have issues with competitors using their livestreaming technology:

“We are very aware that this could happen, and we are fine with that. Because ultimately… that is the best way to compete, and that’s how AWS works in all lines of business.”

Online community reacts to the platform’s CEO’s response

The CEO’s clarification about the platform not profiting from Kick has become one of the most popular posts on the r/LivestreamFail subreddit. Redditor u/issaatroll speculated that Amazon would be making more money from Kick than Twitch:

Comment by u/issaatroll from discussion Ceo of twitch (Dan) states that twitch makes no money off of kick in LivestreamFail

Others wondered whether IVS was created by Twitch or if it was a component of AWS:

Comment by u/beaglefat from discussion Ceo of twitch (Dan) states that twitch makes no money off of kick in LivestreamFail

Comment by u/BigBootyMei from discussion Ceo of twitch (Dan) states that twitch makes no money off of kick in LivestreamFail

Reddit user u/PudgyPanda23 observed Jake Lucky’s reaction before asking the question:

Comment by u/PudgyPanda23 from discussion Ceo of twitch (Dan) states that twitch makes no money off of kick in LivestreamFail

Some of the more notable responses were along these lines:

Comment by u/Brandonp159 from discussion Ceo of twitch (Dan) states that twitch makes no money off of kick in LivestreamFail

Comment by u/csprm977 from discussion Ceo of twitch (Dan) states that twitch makes no money off of kick in LivestreamFail

Comment by u/KGTachi from discussion Ceo of twitch (Dan) states that twitch makes no money off of kick in LivestreamFail

Comment by u/lurkinandsuch from discussion Ceo of twitch (Dan) states that twitch makes no money off of kick in LivestreamFail

Dan Clancy was appointed president of Twitch in 2019. He took over as CEO earlier this year (on March 18, 2023), succeeding Emmett Shear. Since then, he has publicly interacted with some of the most popular content creators, such as Zack “Asmongold,”Emily “ExtraEmily,” and Filian.