Twitch plans to cut subscription revenue for some top streamers in push toward ads

techcrunch.com:

Twitch plans to standardize its revenue sharing agreement with streamers, reshaping the earnings landscape for top creators who have historically been able to pocket a bigger portion of the money they generate through paid subscriptions on the platform.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Twitch President Dan Clancy explained that while the “vast majority” of streamers have a revenue split of 50/50 for paid subscriptions, in the past a subset of creators were offered premium subscription terms that cut them a better 70/30 deal. Twitch subscriptions start at $4.99 per month, offering viewers a way to support their favorite streamers while receiving special access and perks in return.

“This isn’t something we’ve talked about publicly, but such deals are common knowledge within the streamer community,” Clancy said. Apparently Twitch didn’t really have hard and fast criteria outlining who got the better revenue split. The company stopped bringing new streamers into the sweetheart deal more than a year ago, according to Clancy, but anyone with better terms got to keep them for the time being.

In April, Bloomberg reported that Twitch was exploring ways to boost profits by making changes to the revenue sharing agreements with its top tier streamers. Twitch noted that more than 22,000 streamers on its feedback forum have asked the platform to move all creators to the 70/30 subscription split, but instead the opposite will happen.

“As we reflected on how we handled these premium deals, we realized a few problems,” Clancy wrote. “First, we had not been transparent about the existence of such deals. Second, we were not consistent in qualification criteria, and they generally went to larger streamers. Finally, we don’t believe it’s right for