Esports management trends: The rise of Stream managers within esports organizations
Streaming is the second most important factor in the esports world. The first one is winning.
Esports teams leverage streamers to create content, which attracts viewers, which attracts sponsors and advertisers! Nifty monetization trick for esports organization isn’t it? But who and how does it work?
When your entire revenue stream is mostly based on streamers, content and viewer numbers you want to make sure these things run smoothly like a very-well oiled machine.
Ensuring stream-viewers have a consistent experience is hard: it requires a lot of work. Professional esports teams have a lot of streamers to manage and they need people like stream managers (who love spending time on Twitch, YouTube and Reddit), to manage the scaling ecosystem of streaming.
Let’s explore how this works and why it’s key for esports organizations to have such managers.
A while back I had a chance to discuss with @Andy Miller how esports organizations are focusing on streaming, more and more.
A lot came out from those conversations, my conclusions are listed at the bottom of this blogpost (aka tl;dr)
The role of a stream manager
Most serious esports organizations have nowadays the funds to pay multiple streamers to broadcast under their team or company’s brand. That gives esports brands one thing:
V I S I B I L I T Y
Visibility is the best way for esports team to market their value, in 2018. 🤑
Selling sponsorships allows esports organizations to make money: media deals, live events, merchandise, and prize winnings are only secondary to the amount of money that sponsorships bring into esports orgs.
Back to streaming…
Streamers teaming up and helping each other can be naturally seen as an extension of YouTube’s early “content networks” (remember Machinima?) . They’ve done it for years. The newest thing after Twitch’s communities is forming Teams.
Esports organizations are also building their own streaming teams. People in esports org scour the internet finding talent: finding and funding streamers that are consistent, have a good audience size (that is what matters the most to the esport org sponsors) and are potentially upcoming and growing to become the next “Ninja” is extremely hard.
Ninja was streaming under the Luminosity org, while shroud was streaming as a member of cloud9
Once you find a good streamer with a lot of potential and manage to sign them under your “banner” it’s of utmost importance that you don’t lose them!
Esports teams can make money through streaming platforms
If you haven’t seen this, you will be happy to know that your favorite teams probably have a team of streamers, here are a few examples that come to mind:
TSM: https://www.twitch.tv/team/TSM
FaZe: https://www.twitch.tv/team/FaZe
Cloud9: https://www.twitch.tv/team/cloud9
It is common knowledge to people who frequently read the official twitch subreddit that their monetization sauce is secret.
Streamers that are part of an esports organization (like the ones mentioned above) — have their own set of rules, with official Twitch account managers handling payout chats with C-level org members, on case by case basis.
⚡️ If you apply to become a stream manager you will definitely have to keep the above in mind , as it complicates everything from a revenue perspective, including additional terms and conditions set by Twitch. Unlike standard Partners or Affiliates on the network who usually have a fixed rate on ads and sub payouts, Twitch-team-owners have a different set of rules (and monetization deals) they have to respect when it comes to streaming!!
Of course not all streamers are part of a team, shroud and Ninja fly solo, but that’s mostly because their viewership numbers carry a weight that would be impossible for most Twitch streamers to sustain.
Streaming under an organization and a unique banner is a way for teams to grow — allow streamers to be banded together and monetize their content under one management (a partnered streamer who manages the team).
Before you ask, stream managers can indeed set up their teams (simple settings) to accept and aggregate the data from every streaming channel within their team, this can be useful for further analysis as explained in this article on Twitch.
⚡️ Stream Managers act as a gateway for streamers to succeed.
What’s the role of a stream manager in an team?
- Be involved in online and offline streaming events and feats between streamers. (i.e. streamer A appears at event X to meet fans)
- Hire,🔥 & manage members of the stream team to ensure a growth in viewership (and engagement) for the esports org. they represent
- Manage and set-up strategies on stream-hosting and/or raids (specifically on Twitch)
- Ensure the well-being and consistency of high quality streams created by streamers by working 1-on-1 with them.
- Manage and execute sponsorships & partnerships with endemic companies or other brands, streamers or content producers.
- Handle details & terms for giveaways on behalf of streamers
- Ensure various social media executives within the organization are informed of what the team of streamers is up to. Managing the information flux specifically between the editors and the streamers: Really important when new games, content or events happen. 👌
- Track and manage video production for further distribution of stream-related content on various platforms (YT, reddit & other social media)
- Keep an eye on social media buzz (specifically things like subreddits, twitter noise and discord servers)
- Act as the point of contact between orgs and streamers (regardless of whether they are professional gamers living in a gaming house or professional streamers living in their own home)
Wait - why and how?
Now you’re probably wondering: why does this matter? Can’t streamers handle all of this themselves?
Yes as a solo-streamer in a small environment of a few hundred viewers at most…possibly.
Once you hit the thousands concurrent viewers — definitely not.
That allows streamers to focus on what they do best, streaming . Let managers be the helping hands to take care of all the rest.
Let streamers entertain, provide content and value to viewers…all in the hope of increasing visibility for themselves and the brands with whom they are associated.
Don’t believe me? Keep reading…
The Data: streaming by the numbers
Whether you live in a streaming house with multiple other creators or you are a die-hard Twitch.tv lurker/subscriber, you understand the importance of live streaming. Just going by the numbers on Twitch we have, for the year in 2017:
355 Billion minutes watched in a year
- The equivalent of this to put it in perspective, would be 100K people watching Twitch.tv for 6,75 (and some) years non-stop.
- Twitch has ammassed over 1 Million concurrent viewers during ELEAGUE’s CS:GO grand finale.
and more stats you can find here.
In 2018 alone viewers watched 190 million hours of esports (emphasis on esports, not gaming in general) content.
The reason I brought these numbers to the table is that gamers LOVE watching people do things on stream.
From an esports perspective putting your favorite players and personalities in front of this huge audience of viewers does basically 2 important things:
- Reinforces your brand positioning in an ever-growing crowd of content producers, “specialized” gamers and other competitors.
2. Generates partnership money for the organization, as endemic brands want to use streamers as promoters of their gear, software, drinks etc.
🏃Live streaming “activates” esports
Live content is growing stronger at over an astounding 113% rate Year-After-Year (source: FreeWheel Video Monetization Report, Q3 2015).
That was in Q3 2015, and streaming has only grown more — new streaming platforms, more mobile penetration fueled by more ISP operators giving people unlimited bandwidth to watch content, easier set-ups (Nvidia, StreamLabs, OBS) and native streaming capabilities within games and other systems.
In the business of esports alone live streaming allows tournaments to become seasonal, repetitive, events that glue viewers (100s of thousands) in front of their screen for multiple hours per sitting.
The American Footbal World Series had about 14.3 million average viewers of all ages, League of Legends has a very narrow viewership of young, passionate gamers of about 78.5 million. Who do you think wins?
It’s not only the viewing, because we have televisions for that — the chat aspect of live streaming is what most viewers are after:
- Engaging with personalities and streamers
- Feeling part of the community
- Chatting “aggressively”: coming up with, and using memes — and obviously spamming emotes. That’s right…
- Clipping disgustingly good gameplay or other fun moments
Google Search and Facebook/Instagram are prehistoric advertising platforms in the gaming niche
Twitch and YouTube Gaming on the other hand, are leading the forefront of advertising efforts for gamers.
There is no other platform that has pre-teenagers, teenagers and 20–30s with their eyes locked on their platform daily.
Most of the gaming content in today’s world lives either on Twitch live, Twitch clips or YouTube. These platforms make revenue by placing in-video and overlay ads on the content produced. Discovery happens mostly through social media networks (whatsapp groups, twitter, discord…) or reddit!
In Conclusion and in summary.
Given the trends and the importance of live streaming in the last couple of years, it is clear that esports team who are the first-class citizen users of Twitch and YouTube to make revenue they will require stream managers.
That’s a great news for people who are into the streaming and in the gaming niche, as you will have an extra gear and important industry knowledge to fulfil the duties of stream manager.
👀 𝙈𝙮 𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣: I truly believe that in coming years, multiple esports organizations will have job openings for stream managers. These roles would be taken by people with a background in esports, streaming, management, marketing and with a good network. Working this role allows streamers and professional gamers who stream, to be looked after with both’s sides interest in mind. Stream managers will ensure anyone who streams under an esports brand will have all the tools and support necessary for streamers to excel at what they do best — entertain and audience and win (or lose) in style.
🔥 Every team should have a stream manager: this is necessary for esports organizations to thrive successfully in a world dominated by streaming (such as Twitch) and video content (such as YouTube).
Reach out to me @orliesaurus if you have questions… or drop a comment below if you liked or disliked (and why) this article! ⬇️
