The streamer Disguised Toast is facing a million dollar loss with his e-sports team. He blames e-sports itself for this.
Who is it about?
- Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang is a streamer and YouTuber.
- On Twitch, Wang has 2.8 million followers and streams to over 6,000 viewers on average.
- On YouTube, his videos regularly reach 500,000 views with 3.79 million subscribers.
- On Twitch, Wang mainly showcased Teamfight Tactics, League of Legends, Valorant and the “Just Chatting” category in the past 30 days.
How is it going for Disguised Toast in e-sports? In January 2023, Wang founded his own e-sports team, DSG, which competed in Riot Games shooter Valorant. However, things did not go well for Disguised Toast’s team, and after the first seven games, the team was 0:7. The failure continued, and the team lost its spot in the Valorant Champions Tour with a score of 0:11.
In March 2023, Wang also created a women’s team in Valorant, for which he was criticized because the team primarily consisted of known content creators rather than established professionals.
When the North American LoL teams separated from their academy lineups at the end of May, Wang saw an opportunity and entered the NA Challenger League of the MOBA (via Twitter). Shortly after, he received a response from his accountant, who informed him that Disguised Toast is on track to lose a million dollars – twice as much as he originally anticipated:
He told me that I would spend a million dollars this year, double what was expected. He sent me this table with all the red numbers, and I realized that the section about the income was hidden. I asked him: ‘Why did you hide that?’ He said: ‘Well, it’s not hidden; it’s just that there’s nothing there. You’re not making money.’
Disguised Toast via YouTube
Why is Disguised Toast losing money? Wang sees the reason for the modest financial situation in the market itself, specifically in e-sports. It starts with sponsors wanting to distance themselves from e-sports because the teams have not kept their promises to the investors in the past, Wang says in a video on YouTube.
Among the unkept promises of the teams, Wang lists missing triumphs in important tournaments like the Worlds as well as low view counts on YouTube videos and similar content produced by the teams. According to Wang, sponsors are simply making losses and want to leave the scene after their current contracts with the teams expire.
The lack of sponsors, according to the streamer, leads to not just his team, but all teams in North America being in a poor financial position: “If you look at any e-sports organization in North America, they are all either bankrupt or going bankrupt. And I mean all of them,” says Wang, adding, “Believe me when I say that everyone is losing a lot of money. Many people are being laid off, no organization is safe at the moment.”
What is Disguised Toast doing to offset the loss? In the YouTube video where Wang talks about his financial situation since entering e-sports, the content creator also shares what he is doing to still earn money for the team.
He now accepts more sponsors for his own non-e-sports related videos, as every sponsor allows him to pay one player’s salary for another month. This gives him more time to figure out how to “make things work.”
Additionally, he is working on merchandise that he can offer. Organizations like Team Liquid and 100 Thieves show that this can be a viable business model.
However, Disguised Toast is not the only content creator who owns an e-sports team. With Elias Nerlich and his “Focus Clan” as well as HandOfBlood’s Eintracht Spandau
, two German creators have also taken the plunge.
