Many world-known video games companies have started to struggle to advertise their products in the last couple of years. Average spendings for big brands on an annual basis in 2017 were over $36 billion. In other words, big corporations are spending almost 30% of their total net revenue on marketing. These numbers are high, but decent if it results in many new customers in players.
One of the most popular ways to advertise nowadays is through live streaming platforms such as Twitch.tv or Mixer.com. There are dozens of very popular live streamers which are simply going to market the product in front of 50,000 viewers. The compensation fee is huge, so many of these popular streamers are very close to becoming millionaires thanks to this new revolutionary boom. It sounds weird to see more than 80,000 people watching someone else play new popular games and not doing it themselves.
Streamers usually don’t provide gameplay only, but also entertainment, mini competitions, communicate with the audience, answer interesting questions, etc. So the question is, how big is the actual impact of these streaming celebrities on the game’s success overall? Considering all other channels to advertise are oversaturated for years now, all game developers happily turn to these two platforms.
So let’s say a couple of words about Twitch.tv. It’s a streaming platform where they allow everyone to tune in and broadcast. You can stream pretty much everything that doesn’t include adult content or violence. The gaming section is one of the most popular ones and it has a massive audience. The annual DOTA 2 Tournament last year has surpassed 30 million unique viewers on this platform, so you can imagine how Valve Corporation is happy to have such huge marketing of their product.
For example, Sunday night football in America averages around 22 million viewers, so you have a clear idea of how big this actually is. Streaming was not a profitable business a couple of years ago, and it was even labeled as “labor of love”. However, that has changed.
Twitch.tv became the fourth biggest source of peak internet traffic in the United States of America in February 2014. This led to a big acquisition – Amazon decided to buy this platform. The numbers kept growing and reached 2 million broadcasters on a monthly basis in 2018. It is really hard to say who has the biggest impact on the gaming industry but here are some of the top names you should look up for, sourced by Bettingtips4you.
Michael Grzesiak, with an online & twitch alias Shroud, usually has around 40,000 viewers every time he streams on Twitch.tv. He is a former professional player of Counter-Strike: Global offensive, and he was part of many gaming organizations in the past.
There is no doubt he is one of the most known players for this genre, and very entertaining to watch live. He was one of the first players sponsored to play Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, also known as PUBG. It is still unknown how big that payment was, but Shroud has risen the popularity of this game within one week. PUBG was the most-watched video game on twitch for more than a month, after falling to Fortnite later on. Here is a perfect example of a good marketing move, funding a popular streamer to present the product to a very wide audience.
Shroud has played PUBG for more than 50 hours per week and became very good at it. It is shocking for an average first-person shooter fan to see this guy going around and wrecking all other players with ease. This leads to engagement, actions, and probably lots of sold copies. One of the first who joined Twitch.tv in the early days was a 23-years old Chance Morris, more known as Sodapoppin. He is actively streaming for more than seven years now, making a living out of streaming.
Unlike Shroud, Chance is playing many different games, being one of the biggest variety streamers out there. In the past, he was a hardcore player of an iconic game World Of Warcraft. When there is an update for Blizzard Entertainment’s MMO, Sodapoppin returns to his roots and plays his legendary character.
This has resulted in more than 85,000 viewers in late 2018! Because of his willingness and ability to adapt to any type of a video game, this streamer was sponsored by many different companies to test out a lot of different games. Allegedly, Chance Morris has received over $800,000 for sponsored marketing of video games so far.
One of the most controversial video games streamers in 2019 is operating under the alias Doctor Disrespect. The real name of this widely-known entertainer who enjoys playing games like PUBG and H1Z1 is Guy Beahm, and many dramas were evolving around him for the last year or so. The interesting fact is that his twitch.tv numbers just kept on rising.
Beahm is always masked while live streaming, wearing a cool wig, sunglasses, and a parachute suit, trying to represent an arrogant character. He has worked in the gaming industry before, being part of Sledgehammer Games and one of the designers for Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
He gained a lot of popularity thanks to promoting Battle Royale games. The fans were amused listening Doctor calling himself as the winning international champion. At the moment Guy Beahm has around 35,000 subscribers on Twitch.tv, which is around $70,000 per month just from that, excluding donations, partnerships, and sponsorships.
The Wall Street Journal has published an article recently showing details on how much money top streamers make from paid sponsorships. Allegedly EA Games have paid streamer called Ninja $1 million to stream video game Apex Legends for a few days, somewhere around $50,000 per hour, which sounds insane!
