Who owns Kick? Ownership structure explained (2026)

Kick is one of the fastest-growing names in live streaming, and one of the most opaque. It launched at the end of 2022 as a direct challenger to Amazon's Twitch, promising streamers a far larger cut of their earnings and looser content rules. Within a year it had lured some of the biggest names on the internet with contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. But behind the growth sits an unusual ownership story that most competitors do not share.

Kick is not a venture-backed startup in the normal sense. It has no lead investor, no funding rounds, and no path toward an IPO that the company has disclosed. It is owned and financed by the two founders of Stake.com, the largest crypto-based online casino in the world, and its economics are tied to that gambling business in ways the company rarely spells out. Understanding who owns Kick means understanding Stake, the Australian companies that sit above both, and the deliberate lack of disclosure that surrounds the whole structure.

This article traces who owns Kick, how it is financed, who controls it, and why the ownership matters for streamers, regulators, and the broader streaming market.

Kick was founded in 2022 and launched publicly in early 2023. Its co-founders are Bijan Tehrani and Ed Craven (also known as Eddie Craven), two entrepreneurs who had already built Stake.com together in 2017 and the gaming software company Easygo in 2016. The platform is operated from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Kick's core business is live video streaming. It competes directly with Twitch and, more broadly, with the live features of YouTube and TikTok. Its product is built around two pillars that distinguish it from Twitch: a much larger revenue share for creators, and looser content moderation. Kick advertises a 95/5 split, meaning creators keep 95% of subscription revenue while Kick takes 5%. Twitch, by contrast, has historically taken up to 50%. Kick also permits gambling streams, which most rivals restrict or ban outright.

Kick does not disclose audited financials, subscriber counts, or a formal valuation. CEO Ed Craven said in a July 2023 interview that Kick was not yet profitable and aimed to reach profitability through advertising within one to three years. The company's spending has been heavy: it signed streamer Félix "xQc" Lengyel to a deal reported at $70 million to $100 million over two years in 2023, among other large contracts. That spending is funded by Stake, not by outside capital.

Kick is a private company. It is not listed on any stock exchange, there is no Kick share available to public investors, and the company has not announced any venture-capital funding rounds. This sets it apart from most large consumer-tech platforms, which typically raise money from institutional investors and disclose valuations along the way.

Instead, Kick is financed internally. Its backing comes from the profits of Stake.com, the crypto casino run by the same founders. This is a rare structure for a platform of Kick's scale. It means there is no cap table of venture firms, no board seats held by outside funds, and no external shareholders exerting pressure. Control and capital both flow from the same two people.

Kick's legal structure runs through several Australian entities. The platform is operated by Kick Streaming Pty Ltd, which was established on 14 November 2022. The sole shareholder of Kick Streaming is Easygo Entertainment Pty Ltd, which was registered days earlier, on 8 November 2022. Easygo Entertainment is the parent company and the same corporate group associated with Stake and the founders' other ventures.

Above Easygo, ownership sits with Tehrani and Craven personally. Craven holds his interest through a private vehicle called Ashwood Holdings. Reporting on the precise split is inconsistent, which reflects how little Kick discloses. Wikipedia's entry, citing the corporate filings it references, lists the owners as Ashwood Holdings at 50% and Bijan Tehrani at 50%. Some secondary business profiles instead describe a roughly two-thirds Tehrani and one-third Craven split at the Easygo Entertainment level. The company has not published a definitive breakdown, so the exact founder equity split should be treated as unconfirmed. What is clear is that the two founders own effectively all of Kick between them, with no third-party equity holders.

The table below summarizes the known ownership chain rather than a series of funding rounds, because Kick has not raised external rounds.

The single most important fact about Kick's ownership is its link to Stake.com. Tehrani and Craven built Stake into what is widely described as the largest crypto-based online casino in the world, and Kick was launched after Twitch banned Stake from advertising on its platform over consumer-protection concerns. Rather than accept the ban, the founders built a competing streaming service where gambling content was welcome.

That history shapes the money. Kick is financed by Stake's cash rather than venture funding, which is why the founders can spend aggressively on creator contracts without answering to outside investors. It also creates a commercial loop. Kick hosts gambling streams that promote Stake, and Stake's profits fund Kick. A Concordia University researcher, Andrei Zanescu, has argued that Kick's unusually generous 5% take from creators is explained by the new users Stake gains when gambling streamers broadcast on Kick. In other words, Kick may function partly as a marketing and acquisition channel for the casino that owns it.

Kick has given no public indication of plans to go public or to raise outside money. There is no disclosed valuation from a funding round, because there have been no funding rounds. Community and media reports have circulated a figure around $1 billion tied to an acquisition offer that Craven is said to have declined, but that number has not been independently confirmed and should be read as unverified. Because the founders own the company outright and fund it from Stake, they face none of the usual pressures that push private companies toward an IPO or a sale.

Ed Craven is Kick's chief executive and one of its two owners. Born in 1995, he is an Australian entrepreneur whose wealth comes chiefly from Stake. Forbes has estimated his net worth at roughly $2.2 billion. Craven is also a public figure on Kick itself, where he streams, and he has set the company's strategy of spending heavily to win creators away from Twitch.

Bijan Tehrani is the co-founder and the other controlling owner. Born in the United States to Iranian parents and later based in Melbourne, Tehrani co-founded Easygo, Stake, and Kick alongside Craven. Forbes has estimated his net worth at around $2.2 billion, also driven mainly by Stake. Tehrani has spoken publicly about Kick's long-term ambition to overtake or even acquire Twitch.

Because Kick is privately held by its founders, there is no independent board of directors answering to outside shareholders, and no institutional investors with governance rights. Day-to-day leadership sits with Craven and the Easygo group's management. What is confirmed is that the two founders hold both operational and financial control. What is inferred is the precise internal division of responsibilities and the exact equity split between them, neither of which Kick discloses. The founders' other holdings, including a stake in the ASX-listed bookmaker PointsBet held through Easygo, underline that Kick is one piece of a larger, founder-controlled gambling and technology group rather than a standalone business.

Kick's ownership by the founders of a crypto casino is itself a source of scrutiny. Critics argue that a streaming platform financed by a gambling company has an incentive to promote gambling content, and that Kick's tolerance of casino streams reflects that incentive rather than a neutral content policy. The commercial loop between Kick and Stake, where gambling streamers drive traffic to the casino that funds the platform, blurs the line between a media business and a customer-acquisition tool. Stake itself has faced legal pressure, including a lawsuit in Missouri naming celebrities such as Drake and Adin Ross over promotion of the casino. These questions attach to Kick because the same owners control both.

Kick built its early growth on looser moderation than Twitch, and that choice has produced repeated controversy. Reporting has documented streamers engaging in sexual content, hate speech, and apparent criminal conduct on the platform. Streamer Adin Ross, after being banned from Twitch, moved to Kick and drew condemnation for streams that included appearances by extremist figures. Kick's community guidelines formally prohibit hate speech, harassment, and similar behavior, and the company has said it is expanding moderation. But the platform's permissive reputation remains central to how it is perceived, and it is a direct consequence of the founders' hands-off, self-funded control.

The most serious controversy tied to Kick came in August 2025, when French streamer Raphaël Graven, known online as Jean Pormanove, died during a livestream after days of on-camera abuse and sleep deprivation. The case drew national attention in France. A French government minister referred the matter to Arcom, the country's media regulator, and to Pharos, its online-content reporting system, and prosecutors opened an investigation. The episode intensified pressure on Kick over how it moderates extreme content and verifies the safety of streamers, and it put the platform's ownership and accountability under a spotlight in Europe. It is the clearest example of how Kick's content model and its concentrated, private ownership translate into real regulatory risk.

A recurring issue with Kick is simply how little it reveals. It does not publish audited financials, subscriber numbers, or a verified valuation, and the exact equity split between its two owners is not officially confirmed. The corporate chain runs through private Australian entities linked to a Curaçao-registered casino, a structure that makes independent verification difficult. For regulators, journalists, and potential business partners, this opacity is itself a concern, because it limits outside scrutiny of a platform with a large and young audience.

Kick's ownership explains almost everything distinctive about the platform. Because it is owned and funded by two founders rather than outside investors, Kick can spend at a scale that would alarm a normal venture board. The reported nine-figure creator contracts and the willingness to run at a loss reflect owners who answer only to themselves and who draw on a separate, highly profitable gambling business for cash. No external shareholder is pressing for margins or an exit.

For streamers, this ownership structure is a double-edged sword. The 95/5 revenue split and the large signing deals are far more generous than Twitch's terms, and they exist because the founders are willing to subsidize growth. But the same private, gambling-funded structure means creators depend on the continued goodwill and financial health of Stake. If the casino's fortunes or legal standing changed, Kick's spending power could change with it. Creators are, in effect, betting on the owners as much as on the platform. That contrasts with the more diversified backing behind rivals like Twitch, owned by Amazon, and the ad-funded creator economies of TikTok and other platforms.

For regulators and the public, concentrated founder ownership tied to a crypto casino raises accountability questions that a public company would face more directly. There is no independent board, no external audit visible to outsiders, and no disclosure regime forcing the company to explain its content or financial decisions. When something goes wrong, as in the Pormanove case, the lack of transparency makes it harder to assign responsibility. This is a sharp contrast with community-governed or investor-scrutinized platforms such as Discord.

Finally, ownership shapes Kick's future. Because the founders control the company outright and fund it themselves, they can keep it private indefinitely, sell it on their own terms, or wind down spending whenever they choose. There is no investor timeline forcing a decision. For a platform courting a large, young, and heavily male audience, that concentration of control means the direction of Kick rests almost entirely on the judgment and incentives of two people whose primary business is gambling. Marketers tracking this demographic, reflected in broader Gen Z engagement trends, have to weigh that dependence carefully.

Kick is owned by its two co-founders, Bijan Tehrani and Ed Craven, through an Australian corporate chain. The platform is operated by Kick Streaming Pty Ltd, which is wholly owned by Easygo Entertainment Pty Ltd. Easygo is in turn controlled by Tehrani and Craven, with Craven holding his stake through a vehicle called Ashwood Holdings. There are no outside investors.

Ed Craven is the chief executive of Kick. He co-founded the platform in 2022 along with Bijan Tehrani, and he also co-founded the crypto casino Stake.com with Tehrani. Craven is an Australian billionaire whose wealth comes primarily from Stake.

Not directly, but the connection is close. Kick is not a legal subsidiary of Stake.com. However, Kick and Stake share the same two founders, Tehrani and Craven, and the same corporate group, Easygo. Kick is financed by Stake's profits rather than by outside investors, and gambling streamers on Kick often promote Stake. The two businesses are tightly linked through common ownership and funding.

No. Kick is a private company. It is not listed on any stock exchange, there is no Kick stock, and the company has not disclosed any plans for an IPO. It has also never raised institutional venture capital, which makes its ownership unusually closed compared with most large tech platforms.

Kick was founded in 2022 by Bijan Tehrani and Ed Craven. The two had previously co-founded the gaming software company Easygo in 2016 and the crypto casino Stake.com in 2017. They launched Kick as a competitor to Twitch after Twitch banned Stake from advertising on its platform.

Kick has no confirmed public valuation. It has never raised a priced funding round, and it does not disclose revenue or subscriber figures. Reports have circulated that Craven turned down an acquisition offer around $1 billion, but that figure is not independently verified. Because the founders own and fund the company outright, there is no external valuation benchmark.