Twitch lowers top streamers' revenue share
Partners who had been receiving a 70/30 split will be downgraded to a standard 50/50 split after first $100,000
Twitch today announced that it is downgrading the subscription revenue split it offers preferred streamers beginning next year.
Twitch president Dan Clancy announced the change in a blog post today, saying the company offers a standard 50/50 share of revenues to streamers, but has for some time had a "premium" tier of partnered streamer that would receive a 70/30 split instead.
The platform stopped offering those premium agreements more than a year ago, as Clancy said the service realized it hadn't been transparent about their existence, nor consistent in who they would be offered to.
For streamers already on those deals, Clancy said they will earn a 70/30 revenue split on the first $100,000 they earn each year starting June 1, 2023, and the standard 50/50 revenue split after that.
Clancy said 90% of streamers "on standard agreements with premium subscription terms" don't earn enough to see a difference in their pay.
Twitch also used the revenue drop to push streamers more toward advertising, suggesting they opt-in to an Ads Incentive Program that pays them, for example, $500 for running 4 minutes of ads each hour and streaming for 40 hours a month.
"Our recent bump in ads revenue share to 55% as part of the Ads Incentive Program is a great way for these larger streamers to make up most, if not all, of that revenue," Clancy said.
Clancy also justified the change by talking about the cost of streaming video, saying Twitch-parent Amazon charges external parties $1,000 for the equivalent of live-streaming 200 hours of video to 100,000 concurrent users in a month.