The team behind the livestreaming platform Kick, which has become a haven for controversial creators, is launching a new app. On Club, creators can earn money through direct payments and build fan communities.
The pitch: At a time when social media has become riddled with bots and AI slop, Club can help creators — particularly livestreamers — build stronger relationships with their fans and diversify their businesses.
“We launched Club to create a more human form of social media,” said Henrik Pohlmann, Club’s 30-year-old CEO.
Club, which is launching out of beta this week with iOS and Android apps, is entering a crowded market, with big players like Patreon, Substack, and adult-focused OnlyFans.
Club is betting that its emphasis on community and discovery features can help set it apart. For example, fans have profiles, can earn rewards such as participation badges, and can interact with creators and fellow fans.
Club plans to be ad-free, Pohlmann said. It makes money by taking a 20% cut of the payments creators collect, the same percentage that OnlyFans takes (Club doesn’t allow explicit sexual content). That’s higher than Substack’s 10% take on paid subscriptions, and Patreon’s 10% platform fee (though Patreon has other fees, including for processing).
Club has been operating in beta for a few months and said it’s signed up roughly 3,000 creators, mostly livestreamers from Kick.
Club comes from founders Bijan Tehrani and Ed Craven, who also operate Kick and the crypto gambling site Stake.com. Australia-based Kick, established in 2022, has earned a reputation for having lighter content moderation than some of its rivals. The content moderation approach, along with big payouts, has made it a destination for some inflammatory personalities like looksmaxxer Clavicular. Kick has said it has increased its human moderation team over the past few years, and it has just opened up to advertising.
“If they’re trying to attract mainstream creators, they’re going to ask, ‘What is the philosophy behind the platform?'” Matt Navarra, a social media industry analyst, said of Club.
Pohlmann said Club was created with livestreamers in mind. He said the member overlap between Club and Kick is significant now because Club did only limited marketing while it was in beta, but that the platform has ambitions beyond Kick livestreamers. He added that Club is independent of Kick, with its own mission and content moderation policy.
“We are focused on building a platform that supports creators across all types of content and communities,” he said.
Social media analysts say it’ll be tough for Club to get users to come over to a new platform.
Creators are multiplatform now, so there’s less incentive for fans to follow them from one platform to Club unless it can offer a better experience than YouTube, Twitch, and the like, said Ben Woods, head of creator economy at Enders Analysis.
“If it’s the same type of thing, I have a question mark as to how effective that can potentially be,” he said. “It’s got to have a defining feature.”
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