After Twitch, YouTube is now also starting to bind content creators: especially streamers from the Fortnite scene. There have now been exclusive contracts for Rachel “Valkyrae” Hofstetter, Elliott “Muselk” Watkins, and Lannan “LazarBeam” Eacott. Together, they have more than 21 million subscribers on YouTube and will be streaming there regularly in the future.
What is happening right now? On August 1st, the former largest streamer on Twitch, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, announced that he has signed an exclusive contract with Mixer and will no longer stream on Twitch.
As a result, more and more large streamers are signing “exclusive contracts” with platforms. Even streamers who previously were mainly active on Twitch have signed contracts, reportedly worth millions of dollars, to stream exclusively on Twitch in the future.
The German top streamer MontanaBlack is hoping to secure such a contract himself.
There is a competition among the four major streaming platforms to exclusively bind streaming stars:
- Twitch
- YouTube
- Mixer
- and Facebook Gaming
YouTube signs 3 Fortnite streamers exclusively
This is what YouTube is undertaking now: As reported by the BBC, YouTube has now signed exclusive contracts with 3 streamers. Two of them were already big on YouTube and that was therefore their main platform, but they were also active on Twitch. This will change:
- The Australian Lannan “LazarBeam” Scott (25) has 12.3 million subscribers on YouTube – he had 160,000 followers on Twitch. LazarBeam creates content beyond Fortnite, including Minecraft and typical YouTube videos.
- The Australian Elliot “Muselk” Watkins (25) has 8 million subscribers on YouTube – he was on Twitch with 420,000 followers.
- The US streamer Rachel “Valkyrae” Hofstetter (28) has “only” 836,000 subscribers on YouTube – she had about a million followers on Twitch.
What lies behind it: There are essentially two content scenes in Fortnite:
- First, there’s Twitch with well-known figures like Tfue, Myth, TimTheTatman, and many others.
- And then there’s YouTube, where content creators like Muselk and Ali-A are active and big. Muselk is a prominent figure there with “challenges” or “deathruns”.
The respective other platform is used alongside:
- Twitch streamers use YouTube to upload “videos-on-demand” as “secondary use” of things they are already doing on Twitch.
- YouTubers use Twitch to occasionally do live streams.
YouTube apparently wants to strengthen its presence as a “livestream” channel for gaming and ideally establish live streaming alongside the previous business model of “video on demand”.
This is the declared goal of YouTube Gaming: to further develop people who are already big on YouTube and establish live streaming with them.
Thus, Muselk and LazarBeam have announced that they will now stream on YouTube “at least once a week”.
With these commitments, YouTube is investing in existing talent that has already built up a following on YouTube.
These deals are likely less about snatching people away from Twitch now, but rather about strengthening their own platform.
This is the declared goal of YouTube Gaming: to further develop people who are already big on YouTube and establish live streaming with them.
