Kick emerges as the premiere esports broadcasting platform for Turkish LoL audiences

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Over the past few years, Kick has entrenched itself in new, exciting livestreaming markets such as Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa. The platform has also been making efforts to expand into esports broadcasting, acquiring rights for major events by organizers like BLAST, PGL, and ESL last year, and now, they've secured their first breakthrough result. At the recent TCL Winter 2025, Kick showed its esports potential by being the vastly preferred platform for event coverage. Critically, this was the highest ever peak viewership recorded for esports event coverage on Kick.

The TCL Winter 2025 concluded on March 9 with Papara SuperMassive defeating Eternal Fire in a nail-biting 3-2 victory. The SuperMassive squad secured their qualification for the EMEA Masters Winter 2025, and will represent Turkey on the EMEA stage. While this game was highly-watched, the Week 2 match between the Bushido Wildcats and BBL Dark Passage was the most popular game of the tournament, reaching over 86,300 peak concurrent viewers.

The Bushido Wildcats is a new team to the TCL scene, created through a partnership of the İstanbul Wildcats with streamers Anıl "HolyPhoenix" Işık and Ahmet “Jahrein” Sonuç. HolyPhoenix is one of Turkey’s strongest League of Legends players, having made multiple Worlds appearances and collected numerous awards in the TCL for his performances. Together with Jahrein, one of Turkey’s original content creators from 2012, this new squad is massively popular thanks to the co-casting support of these streamers.

Also a massively popular team in their own right, BBL Dark Passage was born when Dark Passage was acquired by BBL Esports last year. Dark Passage was Turkey’s first professional esports organization when it was founded in 2003, and after entering the LoL scene in 2012, they quickly became the local heroes for their region. Now, the team continues its journey under the new collaborative banner.

While previously highly popular TCL events relied on a mix of viewership from YouTube and Twitch, the recent TCL Winter received almost all of its viewership from Kick. Not only is this a testament to Kick’s successful entry to the Turkish livestreaming market, but also the popularity of the co-streamers for the circuit.

In first place, Ferit "wtcN" Karakaya is a retired League of Legends player who received 39.6K Peak Viewers for his coverage of BBL Dark Passage’s game against the Bushido Wildcats. WtcN previously played for Dark Passage briefly as a substitute in 2016, and his coverage of their game helped him to set a new channel viewership record for his Kick account.

Jahrein and HolyPhoenix, who represent the new Bushido Wildcats squad, were also massively popular, with Jahrein falling just short of matching wtcN. All the top co-casters in this graphic were previously highly popular on Twitch, YouTube, or another content creation platform. These streamers are breaking new ground on Kick, setting new records on this platform and benefitting from its lucrative profit splits, as well as other benefits. 

The TCL Winter 2025 was the most popular TCL event in years, powered by loyal viewership through co-casters on Kick. While the grand final itself was not as popular as BBL Dark Passage’s showdown with the Bushido Wildcats, the TCL shows promise in the future if these regional rivalries continue to heat up. Expect Kick to continue to develop as an esports broadcasting platform, with its strong audiences in MENA and LATAM holding great potential.