In case you didn’t hear, there was an interview conducted by Jake Lucky with the Stake founder Eddie Craven. During this hour-and-a-half-long discussion, Craven reveals much new information about his online casino.
But, he also answers many questions about Kick, the new streaming platform that he also co-owns. In fact, this whole interview took place on this streaming website. Lucky and Craven opened a lot of topics, so we will try to present most of them in this article.
Profitability, Monetization, and Hourly Streaming Wages
One of the topics that Craven talked about was the success of Kick. In this interview, he noted that the first 2-3 years of this platform wouldn’t generate any profit.
Here he stated that the staff are a very important part of the company, but they are also worth a lot of money. Craven thinks that there isn’t a big need for a big staff to run a streaming platform. He also mentions the influence of AI, which is making things easier.
He also added that streaming isn’t as expensive nowadays and its cost goes down with the technology. As so, the platform’s cost will be lower. Craven noted that they would never deviate from their revenue split. For him, that would be like stealing donations from a community.
The CEO said that the main focus of Kick at the moment is growth. Because of that, they are ready to offer wages to its content creators. They can earn more or less than $16/h depending on several factors. Here he mentions the average viewers and the chat activity.
At the moment, the company is trying to grow without using ads. Many companies have contacted them with ad offers, but they are refusing all of them.
However, he noted that Kick will eventually feature ads, but they will find a more efficient way to do them. Craven also said that there are almost 100 million views on Kick on a monthly basis.
Stake and Kick Relationship
Obviously, Jake did ask Ed about the relationship between Stake and Kick. About this topic, he noted that both companies share some shareholders, but they act as separate entities.
It isn’t in their plan to involve Stake in the streaming platform and they don’t think that the casino needs ads from Kick. Craven clearly noted that they wouldn’t start running any Stake ads during the streams or use any other advertising method.
He truly believes that Kick will become bigger than Stake. When asked about Twitch’s ban on Stake, he said that they planned on creating a streaming platform before that. But, it did speed up their process.
Kick Contracts
Then the conversation shifted to the massive contracts that Kick is giving out to popular streamers. They started contacting xQc in mid-2022 and they believe that he believes in the platform. However, Craven didn’t state any numbers, but he did mention that the deal is huge.
Ed revealed that he is a fan of DrDisrespect and that they are communicating with his team. Then he said that they are openly talking with a lot of people. As a surprise, he mentioned wanting to work with Pokimane, who doesn’t think highly of Kick.
The CEO also stated that they plan on hiring the much smaller streamers, thanks to the hourly wage incentive. Craven added that singular contracts are not scalable. He says that getting a hundred 1 million deals is better than signing one 100 million deal. But, he believes that xQc is an exception.
When asked about Trainwreck, he said that he was there before day 1 and that he gets involved as much as he likes. Ed also stated that they do think that Adin is a brand risk, but they’ve talked to him about past incidents.