The biggest gaming personalities on Twitch and YouTube are rolling in the dough. According to the Wall Street Journal, publishers are paying celebrity streamers anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 an hour to play their latest releases.
That’s an incredible amount of money, but companies are eager to pay up because it’s a very effective form of advertising. As Forbes explains, top streamers can show off a game and its nuances to hundreds of thousands of viewers at a time. There’s also a level of trust established between streamers and spectators, which encourages sales.
“We have the power to convince people to buy a game they’re on the fence about,” said Benjamin Lupo, one of the live-streamers Electronic Arts paid to play “Apex Legends” for a few hours at its release Feb. 4. “They see us as more trustworthy than a name they don’t recognize that wrote a review. They can see our faces. It’s live interaction.”
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