Dominant
Streamers fragment across platforms
Fragmentation is the end state, not a transition. Korea settled into a SOOP/Chzzk duopoly two years after Twitch left. And Kick's growth is IRL and combat sports, not the gaming audience Twitch lost, so share charts mislead. Single-platform reads of "streaming culture" break.
Where it stands
The live-streaming audience is un-bundling from any single platform. Twitch stayed the most-watched at 19.2 billion hours in 2025 but shed 8.3 points of share, its Q4 the lowest since early 2020, while Kick grew 131% and Korea's Chzzk 44%. Creators now multi-home by default: Twitch anchors ~56% of the average simulcaster's hours, but the clip layer driving discovery runs through TikTok and YouTube. The money has begun to follow: across comparable brand deals in 2026, YouTube gaming creators commanded about 23% higher rates than Twitch streamers on Collabstr's data, so the hours-watched charts and the earnings charts no longer rank the platforms the same way.
Further reading
The timeline, consequences and objections for this trend are not written yet. What it is and its reading list are above.