Patrick Sammon, Hubert Kos, and Ilya Kharun Looking To Grow Swimming With A New Audience: Twitch

Patrick Sammon, Hubert Kos, and Ilya Kharun have teamed up in hopes of growing the sport of swimming with a different audience. The three have turned to the live streaming platform Twitch.

Sammon, Kos, and Kharun were teammates at Arizona State together, before Kos followed Bob Bowman in summer 2024 to Texas. All three swam at the 2025 World Championships with Sammon representing the US, Kos swam for Hungary, and Kharun represented Canada.

Sammon said that the three originally got the idea from streamer Jynxzi. “We kind of started because we’ve already been playing together for out of so many years now and we’re just like I guess we’re kind of inspired from one of the creators called Jynxzi…we  thought it be kind of fun to showcase what we like to do outside the pool and maybe even make some sort of money through live streaming as well.”

The three are “trying to reach out or get like swimming noticed other than other like the main like swim, swim and use a swimming bike through those sites so we’re trying to kind of branch out and your audience,” Sammon said. “That way people who aren’t really that well informed with the sport can kind of maybe get introduced that through us or and vice versa, like people who already know us to a sport can kind of see Our personal like it, I don’t know What’s it called? I just seen our lives outside swimming and see us out for more than just like summer so that makes sense”

Sammon said that he has not received any payments from Twitch yet but he knows Kos has received some payment from it. Kos has also had the highest number of people watching the livestream at once, with viewership typically around 100-200 viewers at a time.

Although it has only been going on about two months, the group has gotten a lot of positive feedback. Sammon said that the people have been “super supportive” and that the audience has especially enjoyed when other swimmers join the livestream.

Hubert Kos had Summer McIntosh on an hour livestream just over a month ago. Kos and McIntosh took questions from fans and McIntosh discussed how she is taking one class, an accounting class, right now. She also detailed when she decided not to do NCAA swimming as well as answered a question on which World Record she thinks she can lower the most. She replied with the 200 IM.

Kos has also had a Q&A session with Josh Liendo and Jordan Crooks.

Kos spoke of his experience so far saying, “Its been very fun very new, I have built a small fan base on there with around 1000 followers right now. I feel like it has always been very important for me to make my fans happy in and out of the pool. So far, outside of the pool this has only included signing caps or shirts. But now I have a unique opportunity to engage with them online whilst playing games I already play. I have also started asking them to send in videos/clips of themselves swimming so that I can rate them and help them get better. I have also gotten a couple other swimmers on for Q&As so that my viewers can ask them questions they may not ever be able to ask them. If this interests anyone else they should go follow or subscribe to freshfysh on twitch! I would be happy to keep it growing.”

Arizona State’s Ilya Kharun spoke of his Twitch experience so far saying it has, “been really fun, especially engaging with viewers and giving advice to some that ask for it. It is a really fun platform to show your audience, who you are outside of swimming in a way, I do have my youtube channel that does that but being live is different in a way. But I would sum it up as a different kind of fun experience that really can promote and advertise swimming in a cool way.”

Between the three of them, they try and get a stream going somewhere from 3-5 times a week. Kos already has over 1,200 subscribers to his channel, freshfysh. Sammon’s username is proxy_pat, and Kharun’s is AquaSavageVII_1.