Controversial streamer Nick “Nickmercs” Kolcheff recently announced a massive $US10 million deal with Twitch rival Kick, and it seems that, although he once implored pro-LGBTQIA people to “leave children alone,” he’s not worried about teaching children how to gamble.
In a recent Kick stream, Kolcheff (whose skin was removed from Call of Duty back in June after he made those anti-LGBTQ comments on social media) was chatting with his viewers about his new contract. “The first question I’ve been seeing is like ‘yo Nick, are you gonna do gambling streams’?” He then smiles while furiously chewing gum, before yelling “si señor!” “Yes, we’re going to do gambling streams,” he elaborates. “We’re not gonna do a shit ton, but we’re gonna do some gambling for sure. It’s part of the contract.”
Kotaku reached out to Kick and Kolcheff for clarification on the details of his contract but did not receive a response in time for publication. However, Andrew Santamaria, Kick’s head of strategic partnerships, quoted the post above and stated that “there is no gamba [gambling] clause in the Kick contract.”
Jake Lucky, who initially shared the clip, then clarified, writing that Kolcheff “has a Stake contract alongside his Kick contract.” Stake is a gambling website co-owned by Bijan Tehrani and Ed Craven, who are Kick’s major backers along with streamer Tyler Faraz Niknam, so Santamaria’s clarification isn’t entirely honest. Interestingly, Kolcheff suggests in the clip above that he will be streaming outside of North America for those gambling-related sessions, likely because Stake is banned in the US.
Kick has been steadily poaching some of the biggest streamers in the industry since its launch a year ago, with both Félix “xQc” Lengyel and Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa recently inking deals with the Twitch competitor. xQc’s deal was worth $US100 million, while Amouranth never revealed the official cost of hers. And while the streaming platform has better revenue-sharing options than Twitch, it’s heavily entwined with gambling (Asmongold revealed several months ago that the site appears to be hard-coded to feature gambling on its homepage) and has courted some problematic figures in the industry, including Adin Ross, who was banned from Twitch back in February after streaming pornographic content.
Twitch banned gambling sites like Stake back in 2022, after users voiced concerns that prominent streamers were promoting sites to young, impressionable viewers. And though Craven announced back in June that Kick had “removed some unnecessary exposure to gambling related content” and “would be adding the ability to toggle off all gambling related streams,” gambling is clearly still a cornerstone of the streaming service—so much so that Kolcheff, one of the most prominent figures in the industry, will be hosting gambling streams as part of his new deal.
And don’t forget that another one of Kick’s newly minted streamers, xQc, once lost nearly $US2 million thanks to what he himself called a gambling “addiction.” But god forbid the kids go to a drag show, right?