iGaming (the collective term for online gambling and betting) is one of the fastest growing entertainment industries. Global search interest in iGaming increased 8x from 2023 to 2026. This is not due to the prevalence of iGaming content in live streaming. For viewers of sports, esports, and competitive community events, live streaming is a natural home for iGaming services and their users. Viewers are already paying attention, emotionally focused on the outcome, and ready to engage with betting and prediction content in real time.
But while other brands are making a big splash with innovative creator marketing activations via live streaming, iGaming brands haven’t been given the same spotlight. This article details how iGaming brands will show up in live streaming in 2026, from brands dominating stream titles and chat mentions to creators attracting the largest iGaming audiences.
Key points by Stream Hatchet:
- iGaming is growing in live streaming thanks to speculation and its ties to competitive sports and esports.
- Due to Kick’s relationships with Kick’s biggest streamers, you’ll see stakes on most stream titles
- Among US betting and prediction brands, Polymarket and Kalshi drive the most discussions
Get ahead of your competitors by betting on Kick the Stake
In January 2026, Stake appeared in 6.6K streamed titles across Twitch and Kick. This accounted for 60% of all iGaming brand mentions combined. Its closest competitor, 1XBet, manages 1.8,000 mentions, followed by others such as Betano (837) and Winamax (653). Combined with all the other iGaming brands considered here, stream titles only received 4.4,000 mentions. The gap between stake and other areas is insurmountable for the time being.
That’s because the stake advantage here is structural. Kick was co-founded by backers of Stake Some are built as platforms for gambling content to thrive (In contrast to Twitch, which continues to crack down on gambling content). The majority of Kick’s most active streamers are directly affiliated with the Kick brand and are committed to properly displaying Stake in their stream titles. This type of advantage makes it unrealistic to compare your company to Stake’s presence. For other iGaming brands, unless you’re willing to compete with Stake on your home platform, it may be worth looking at other areas of the live streaming economy that you can leverage (we’ll discuss some examples of that later).
Kick Creators hit the jackpot with iGaming content
As a result of this move by Stake, the top 10 iGaming creators by time watched in January 2026 are all streaming on Kick. Trainwreckstv ranks first with 15.6 million hours watched. It’s fitting given his role as one of Kick’s early backers and founding streamer. Classybeef followed with 13.9 million hours watched and ROSHTEIN followed with 12.6 million hours watched, both of which are established names in the world of slots and casino streaming. The top three alone received over 42 million hours watched in a single month, illustrating how concentrated the audience is among a core group of established iGaming creators.
But more could be mined here: AdinRoss is ranked 6 butth With 7 million hours watched, Kick also has the largest number of followers at 1.9 million. The gap between follower count and total watch time suggests that AdinRoss attracts a broad cross-platform audience that doesn’t necessarily watch long sessions, while creators like Trainwreckstv and Classybeef are fostering deeply engaged communities that carve out some serious time. That distinction is important for iGaming brands that value their partnerships with creators. Raw follower counts and recurring viewer counts serve completely different marketing goals.
Prediction markets lead US live streaming betting conversation
For the rest of our iGaming brand research, we wanted to expand our scope to include other similar apps to get a more complete picture of the potential of live streaming. That’s why we consider services like Polymarket and Kalshi, which are not considered gambling brands by the CFTC and are specifically classified as “prediction markets.” This is a meaningful distinction.
Among US-focused betting and prediction brands on Twitch and Kick in January 2026, Polymarket and Kalshi led the chat mention rankings with 12,000 and 11.7,000 mentions, respectively.significantly outperforms sportsbooks like FanDuel (8.8K) and PrincePicks (5.3K). The reason for this could be that Polymarket and Kalshi are prediction markets. It is a platform where users trade based on the probabilities of real-world outcomes across sports, politics, and current events. Prediction markets encourage more discussion to share knowledge about current events, rather than betting on “simple” outcomes like the roll of a die or a slot machine.
Additionally, both brands will aggressively expand into the US market in the second half of 2025, with Polymarket acquiring a CFTC-regulated exchange and Kalshi closing successive funding rounds totaling over $1.3 billion through the second half of 2025. That momentum has made January 2026 an especially active time for both parties in public conversations, and chat data reflects that.
Either way, chat mentions are very important for both sportsbooks and prediction markets. Appearing in a live chat often means that viewers are actively using the platform to speculate on events unfolding in real time. This organic engagement is a fundamentally different signal than brand awareness alone. That’s because it means the platform is part of how viewers engage with the content they’re watching.
Sports betting content finds discussion forums on Twitch and YouTube
Not all of the top creators driving iGaming brand mentions use Kick. For example, Stokastic DFS leads creators with 742,000 hours watched and iGaming brand mentions on the channel. The YouTube-based daily fantasy sports channel is built around DraftKings and FanDuel lineup strategies for the NFL, NBA, MLB, and more. That audience is exactly the kind of highly engaged, betting-savvy audience that iGaming brands want to reach. Barstool Sports (88,000 hours watched, 1.9 million followers), Barstool After Dark (87,000), Barstool Gambling (79,000) combined in twon.d.,3rdand 4thall run on YouTube under the same Barstool Sports media umbrella.
This concentration of Barstool is notable. Three different channels from the same brand together account for a significant share of iGaming-adjacent viewership, each targeting slightly different segments of the sports and betting audience. Barstool Sports captures a wide range of sports fans, Barstool After Dark leans toward entertainment and personality-driven content, and Barstool Gambling focuses on a gambling-focused audience. Other channels and iGaming brands can learn from this example. Imagine an iGaming brand sponsoring a channel with non-iGaming gambling content, allowing them to create iGaming-centric content and tap into another demographic of gambling viewers.
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The relationship between iGaming and live streaming is growing stronger. The overlap between the two industries represents a huge opportunity as the betting and prediction market expands into new geographies and live streaming audiences continue to grow, especially around sports, esports, and competitive events. Brands that act early to establish a true presence in live streaming, whether through creator partnerships, sponsored content, or esports activations, are best positioned to reach the next generation of bettors who are already investing their time.
The opportunities extend beyond iGaming operators. As we investigated, payment providers, data platforms, affiliate networks, and other services that power the iGaming ecosystem can all benefit from the same live streaming audience. Broader non-specific brands. Live streaming provides a window into how viewers are engaging with iGaming brands in real time, making it a noteworthy data set for any business operating within or adjacent to this space.
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