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Kick co-founder Bijan Tehrani has confirmed that Kai Cenat and IShowSpeed turned down offers to stream on the platform. Now, he wants to buy Twitch instead.
Kai Cenat blew away the streaming world in November by regaining his record for the most subscribed Twitch streamer mere days after starting his Mafiathon.
After taking the record back, Cenat claimed that Kick had offered him a whopping $60M to stream the first Mafiathon – something that Kick co-owner Trainwreck denied.
“Just for the record… I know the deal. Just for the sake of everyone, I want to specify it. It wasn’t $60M for a subathon, it was $22M for a year,” Trainwreck said.
Back in 2023, Adin Ross claimed that Kick had offered $40 million each to Kai Cenat and IShowSpeed.
As the discussion between contracts waged, Kick’s co-founder Bijan Tehrani weighed in to reveal new details about the offer and why it didn’t work out.
Big respect to Kai, we tried to get him and speed over but we didn’t even have a mobile app at the time. Ultimately they signed with rumble which gave them a lot more flexibility (1-2 streams a month).
We aren’t doing big signings right now, our priority is our tech. Don’t…
— Bijan Tehrani (@BijanTehrani) November 12, 2024
Tehrani congratulated Kai on his record and explained that the platform had tried to sign him and IShowSpeed back before they even had a mobile app, but couldn’t compete with Rumble’s offer.
“Ultimately they signed with Rumble, which gave them a lot more flexibility (1-2 streams a month),” Tehrani said.
Despite The Kai ‘N Speed Show originally doing big numbers on Rumble, the two haven’t streamed on the platform since Episode 12 on March 27 when the duo had a sleepover.
As for whether Kick has any plans of offering either Kai or Speed a deal in the future, Tehrani cast doubt on the idea, but has another plan to get Cenat on his platform.
“We aren’t doing big signings right now, our priority is our tech. Don’t write off Kick though, we are at record usage and hungrier than ever. But our focus has shifted to long term. The goal is still the same, we will either beat Twitch or buy them out.”
The official Kick X account even responded to Tehrani with the cryptic date “April 26 2027,” but didn’t provide any additional context.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about Twitch potentially being bought out. In October, as the Amazon-owned company was experiencing backlash for some of its moderation decisions, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski predicted that Twitch will either be shut down or sold off in two years.
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