Kick streamer’s contract includes gambling at crypto casinos

A leading American YouTuber and Twitch presence has signed a deal with streaming platform Kick that includes playing at crypto casinos for his viewers.

Nick “Nickmercs” Kolcheff, who is known for playing Call of Duty in front of his many fans, has joined Kick with the deal also including gambling streams.

Kick is a growing presence in the world of streaming, helping to fill the gap after the sector’s major player Twitch moved to ban online gambling activity from its platform around a year ago.

“The first question I’ve been seeing is like, ‘Nick, are you gonna do gambling streams?’” Nickmercs said during his first stream on the Kick platform. “We’re gonna do some gambling for sure. It’s part of the contract.”

Kick has close links to Stake.com, which is one of the world’s largest crypto casinos and sportsbooks sites, having signed up brand ambassadors such as the Canadian musician Drake.

But it was later clarified by Kick’s head of strategic partnerships that the deal with Nickmercs has a separate strand for the Stake.com link to provide online gambling live streams.

Nickmercs, who is a co-owner of FaZe Clan and has played Fortnite competitively in his career, also confirmed to his viewers that he “got another place” to produce the gambling streams.

The streamer is based in America, where it is not currently legal to use Stake.com as the site does not have a licence to operate in the US. Stake was among the sites banned by Twitch.

In recent times Kick has shown a willingness to splash the cash in a bid to attract some of the world’s most popular streamers, bringing in a higher viewership to the platform as a result.

Félix “xQc” Lengyel and Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa are among the stars to have made the move to the Kick platform, which has reportedly agreed an eight-figure deal with Nickmercs. The contract is for a year and is non-exclusive, so Nickmercs will continue to also stream on Twitch.

Many of the most popular streamers on Kick provide gambling live streams but xQc recently claimed he would be quitting betting on the site after he won $5 million playing at Stake.com.

The crypto casino was reportedly also being lined up to be the shirt sponsor of Premier League football team Chelsea ahead of the 2023-24 season, only for the deal to collapse following protests from supporters groups.