Who owns Kick? The Easygo / Stake.com co-founders behind the platform

Is Kick a Stake subsidiary, then? Most people assume yes. Strictly: no. Kick and Stake are siblings, not parent and child. Same people own both. They share an HQ in Melbourne. They share executives. But the corporate trees are separate, the revenue lines are separate, and the user-facing terms of service are separate.

What about the actual ownership split between Craven and Tehrani? That is where the public record gets messy. Wikipedia reports 50/50. Several business listicles report a roughly two-thirds / one-third arrangement. Both can be technically right at different layers of the cap-table. We unpack that contradiction below, with both sources cited.

Two founders. One holding company. Three money streams. That is the whole map.

The corporate stack: Kick Streaming Pty Ltd, then Easygo Entertainment

Open the Kick.com terms of service. Pull any Australian company filing. The operating entity you find is Kick Streaming Pty Ltd, ACN 663 807 645. It is registered in Victoria. The Melbourne address overlaps with Stake.com's local offices ([Wikipedia: Kick (service)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_(service))).

Kick Streaming Pty Ltd at a glance

Here is a small-but-real discrepancy in the legal-entity record that almost no competitor article flags. Wikipedia gives Kick's inception as December 2022 ([Wikipedia: Kick (service)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_(service))). Then check Wikidata. The [Q117084855](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117084855) entry has a different date: December 1, 2021. Why? Best guess: the 2021 Wikidata date is an internal Easygo project or a placeholder parked there before the actual public Kick brand went live in late 2022. Neither side explains it. If you are filing something regulatory, or citing academically, just cite both and flag the gap. We have done the flagging for you here.

Kick went public-facing in late 2022. Real scale came in 2023, after xQc signed in June and the traffic curve bent upward.

Easygo Entertainment Pty Ltd as the parent

One layer up sits Easygo Entertainment Pty Ltd, the holding company. Per Wikipedia, Easygo Entertainment was registered on 8 November 2022. That is roughly three weeks before Kick went live, which is what a corporate-entity restructuring before a brand launch normally looks like. Easygo also runs Stake.com's software and infrastructure day-to-day. Same engineers, two products.

Two adjacent vehicles also matter, because the public-record ownership picture depends on them:

• Ashwood Holdings. Ed Craven's Kick stake is held through this entity, per Wikipedia's company-info infobox. Not directly on his own name.
• Easygo Gaming. Craven and Tehrani jointly use this vehicle to hold a position in ASX-listed bookmaker PointsBet. Wikipedia's [Ed Craven biography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Craven) reports they hold over 5 % of PointsBet through Easygo Gaming, with the position increasing in May 2024.

How Kick is, and is not, a Stake.com subsidiary

Here is where most SEO writers go wrong. Kick.com is not a Stake.com subsidiary. They are siblings. Separate operating companies, separate revenue lines, separate user-facing TOS. What they share: owner identity (Craven and Tehrani), Melbourne HQ, overlapping engineering staff under Easygo. Ask 'is Kick owned by Stake?' — strict-corporate answer is no. Loose practical answer most readers want: Kick is run by the same people who run Stake, with Stake money in the room.

Why bother with the distinction? Open any creator-deal piece, sponsorship-dollar reporting, or regulatory-exposure write-up. You will see the trap. Cash from 'Stake's gambling sponsorship budget' to a streamer is not money paid by Kick. Even if the streamer happens to be on Kick. We come back to that point in the money-map section below.

The two co-founders: Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani

Ed Craven, CEO of Kick, co-founder of Stake

Start with [Ed Craven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Craven). Full name Edward Craven, born 1995, Australian. Public face of Kick: he is the CEO, runs Melbourne operations hands-on, and broadcasts on Kick himself. Unusual move for a platform owner. It is also why he keeps turning up in chat-side conversations more than your average executive does. He co-founded Stake.com (Curaçao gambling licence, one of the world's largest crypto-denominated casinos by handle).

Now follow the corporate trail. Craven's Kick stake sits behind Ashwood Holdings, not on his own name. Founder-with-multiple-holdings move, perfectly standard. It keeps Stake, Kick, and PointsBet exposures in separate vehicles. Wikipedia notes that as of June 2024, Easygo Solutions (Craven's company) owned both the Stake and Kick platforms, which is consistent with the Easygo Entertainment parent-of-Kick structure. Through Easygo Gaming, he and Tehrani jointly hold the >5 % PointsBet stake mentioned earlier.

For streamers thinking about migrating to Kick, two things read as commitment from Craven: he physically stays in Melbourne, and he keeps streaming. No tax-haven absentee-founder vibe.

Bijan Tehrani, co-founder of Stake

Tehrani is the other co-founder of Stake.com. He owns the other half of Easygo Entertainment too — and therefore the other half of Kick. (Or two-thirds, depending which source you trust; see next section.) Compared to Craven, his public profile is thin. Few interviews on the record. Rarely named in streaming-industry coverage. From the public record, the reportable facts are short: his Stake.com role, his Easygo Entertainment ownership, and his presence in the same Melbourne corporate footprint.

Want a signal on Tehrani's policy posture (his stance on gambling-content tolerance, say)? The available evidence is largely indirect, inferred from Stake's behaviour over the past three years, not from any quoted Tehrani public statement.

The ownership-split disclosure: 50/50 vs 2/3 – 1/3

Here is the section where most 'who owns Kick' articles fail. Two reputable-looking public sources report two different ownership splits. We cite both and explain what is actually unresolved.

Wikipedia's company-info infobox gives 'Owners: Ashwood Holdings (50 %), Bijan Tehrani (50 %).' Business Model Analyst writes that Tehrani 'controls a 66.67 % stake in Easygo Entertainment, while Ed Craven holds the remaining 33.33 % through Ashwood Holdings.'

Both can be technically accurate at once. Here is why. Easygo Entertainment Pty Ltd is one corporate layer; the broader Easygo group sweeps in other companies too — Easygo Gaming, Easygo Solutions — and the cap-tables across those companies do not have to match. Wikipedia's 50/50 figure may be tracking the operating-Kick entity specifically. Business Model Analyst's 2/3 – 1/3 figure may track a higher holding layer, where Tehrani picks up extra equity carried over from earlier Stake-side positions. Neither source tells you which layer it is reporting on. Bottom line on the public record: unresolved. (Wikidata Q117084855, accessed 2026-05-01.)

Filing regulatory or due-diligence material? Cite both. Note the layer is unresolved. Flag it for primary-source verification. An ASIC company-extract for the Easygo Entertainment Pty Ltd ACN runs about AUD 18 if you need to pull it. For everyone else — streamers, fans, journalists — the bottom line is shorter: both founders own substantial equity, both wield decision-making influence, and Tehrani may hold the larger absolute stake even where the operating-Kick layer reads 50/50.

Two founders. Two reports. One unresolved gap.

The Stake / Easygo / PointsBet money map

This is the section every 'who owns Kick' article needs. Most do not have it. Money flowing around Kick comes from at least three distinct buckets, and confusing them is the most common factual error in this beat.

First, Kick subscriptions. Pay $4.99 for one — $4.74 lands with the streamer, $0.25 with Kick. Famous 95/5 split, cited everywhere. The footnote almost nobody reads: switch on multistreaming (simultaneous Kick + Twitch + YouTube broadcasts) and Kick's cut balloons. The streamer drops to 47.5/52.5 for the multistreamed hours, per [Kick's multistreaming and exclusivity policy](https://help.kick.com/en/articles/9381443-streamer-program-tiers-and-benefits). Math out a creator on $10k/month exclusive: they see closer to $5k once they multistream. Break-even moves. That is decision-relevant for anybody weighing migration.

Now Stake.com gambling sponsorships. Stake writes cheques directly to streamers — for gambling-stream content, for ad placements. Canonical example here is the Trainwreckstv October 2022 disclosure of roughly $360 million paid by sponsors over 16 months ([Wikipedia: Trainwreckstv](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trainwreckstv)). Crucial nuance: that disclosure pre-dates Kick going public-facing as a major platform. So the $360M is correctly attributed to Stake-style gambling-sponsorship spend, not to Kick paying creators. Pieces that frame $360M as 'how much Kick pays its streamers' are mixing the buckets. Full stop.

Then PointsBet equity. Easygo Gaming holds the position; Craven and Tehrani jointly hold >5 % of ASX-listed bookmaker PointsBet, with their position increasing in May 2024 per Wikipedia. Separate revenue line. Separate capital-gains exposure. Has nothing to do with Kick's or Stake's operating revenue.

So picture three boxes. Kick is one product. Stake is another. PointsBet is a portfolio investment. The owners are the same two people, but the cash flows do not pool at the user level. A streamer's Kick paycheck comes from Bucket 1. The gambling-promo paycheck comes from Bucket 2. PointsBet does not touch streamer pay at all.

Numbers matter here. Mixing them is the canonical mistake.

Notable creator deals through Kick

To make the corporate stack concrete, here are the creator deals readers ask about, with precise figures. Rounding errors in this part of the record have caused months of inaccurate coverage.

xQc, June 2023. Per the [Wikipedia: xQc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQc) entry, the deal 'was valued at $70 million over two years' and 'established a non-exclusive partnership between Lengyel and Kick. The agreement included the potential for performance-based bonuses, totaling approximately $30 million.' Hit every bonus tier and the ceiling lands near $100M. But the base is still $70M, not $100M. Calling this 'a $94M deal' or 'a flat $100M deal' — both wrong, both collapse the structure. The non-exclusive flag matters as much. xQc kept posting on YouTube and other platforms throughout, a structurally different setup from Twitch's old exclusivity deals.

WestCol Stream Fighters 4 ran on October 18, 2025. Peak concurrent viewers? Roughly 4 million per Dexerto (1-minute peak window). Roughly 4.6 million per Streams Charts (5-minute rolling window). Both peaks are real. They measure different windows. Cite both when comparing Kick's all-time peaks.

Spreen migrated to Kick on September 22, 2024 per Wikipedia. The Argentine streamer's move is one of the cleaner case studies of a non-English-speaking creator using Kick to consolidate audience without splitting revenue across two networks.

Adin Ross? Long-running Kick creator with one of the largest reaction-content audiences. We cover Adin and the Kick reaction subculture in depth in [our top Kick streamers ranking for 2026](/blog/top-kick-streamers-2026). Relevant point here: Adin's deal terms are not publicly disclosed at the level xQc's are.

Why ownership matters for streamers

Deciding whether to broadcast on Kick? The ownership picture maps onto three practical questions.

Will the 95/5 split survive?

The aggressive sub split is owner-decreed, not algorithm-set. It can change with one board decision. Craven and Tehrani have repeatedly stated commitment to it. The multistream-toggle 47.5/52.5 modification (Bucket 1 footnote above) shows how the policy gets tuned without retracting the headline number. For a comprehensive comparison of what the split actually means in practice across both platforms, see our [Kick vs Twitch 2026 breakdown](/blog/kick-vs-twitch-2026).

How tolerant will the platform be of gambling content?

Owner background (Stake.com) strongly biases the answer toward 'more tolerant than Twitch.' The bigger nuance is that the August 17–18, 2025 Pormanove incident triggered a Kick community-guidelines update that materially shifted policy posture. The platform is no longer the wild-west it was associated with through 2024. Parents and risk-averse creators should read [our parents' guide to Kick safety](/blog/is-kick-safe-2026-parents-guide) for the post-Pormanove specifics.

Are payouts stable enough to plan around?

The owners are sitting on multiple revenue sources (Stake, Kick, PointsBet equity, plus prior Stake-era proceeds), which insulates them from short-term cash crunches in any one product. Positive stability signal. The negative signal: ownership concentration is high. There is no public-board governance check, so unilateral product decisions are normal. Want to compare Kick's partner-program tier requirements with Twitch's? Our [Kick Partner Program requirements walkthrough](/blog/kick-partner-program-requirements-2026) lays out the thresholds. For creators specifically interested in scaling viewership on the platform, [Kick viewer boosting is one of our core services](/buy-kick-viewers).

The implicit message in all of this: Kick's owner identity is the dominant variable. Comfortable with Craven plus Tehrani as platform stewards? The economics are unusually creator-favourable. Uncomfortable with the Stake.com adjacency? Kick is structurally not a fit, no matter how good the sub split looks.

Watch the founders, not the brand.

Recent leadership statements and governance signals

Through Q1 and Q2 of 2026, Craven's public posture has been visibly more conservative than the platform's 2024 era. Watching the changelog through April 2026: community-guidelines clarifications, a more-formalised content-policy enforcement track, clearer creator-side terms. Read it as deliberate positioning ahead of the EU's Digital Services Act enforcement schedule. The August 17–18, 2025 Pormanove incident is the inflection point. Before that date, Kick's policy work read as reactive. After, it has been proactive and dated. The timing lines up with Kick's first publicly-dated community-guideline overhaul, with subsequent revisions in October 2025 and February 2026 closing further gaps around moderator response time and on-stream gambling-promo disclosures.

One more dated signal worth holding in mind. On August 21, 2025, Twitch shipped an enforcement action that produced a roughly -24 % global concurrent-viewer drop, as tracked by [Streams Charts' Q3 2025 industry report](https://streamscharts.com/news) and tied to a Russian-Twitch botfarm exposé from the Meddison 2025 reporting. That created a visible-traffic opportunity window for Kick during late Q3 2025. Kick's owner-side response (more creator deals, accelerated mobile-app polish) is exactly what active, hands-on ownership does. Not what absentee management does.

March 2025 changed the regulatory calculus. August 2025 changed the policy calculus. The pattern is dated, not narrative.

Frequently asked questions

About the author and methodology

Daria Ivanova is a streaming-platform analyst at StreamRise. Cross-references for this article were pulled from Wikipedia (Kick, Ed Craven, xQc, Trainwreckstv pages, all consulted in their May 2026 state), Wikidata Q117084855, and Business Model Analyst's 'Who Owns Kick' reporting. Where public sources contradicted each other (most visibly on the Craven/Tehrani ownership split), both have been cited. No primary ASIC company extract was pulled for this piece. If you require regulator-grade ownership confirmation, consider obtaining the ACN 663 807 645 record directly. ([StreamRise team](/about))

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