Gaming sponsorships

Gaming is massive in the world right now, and something that is part and parcel of the gaming industry today is the art of streaming.

Whether you’re a streamer or a brand looking to sponsor a streamer, gaming sponsorships by Twitch streamers is big money if you’re able to keep a high consistent viewer count, and you’re able to monetize it going forward. If you’re looking at this as a brand, then you’ll quite easily be able to see just how straightforward it can be.

As a company or brand looking to get your message or product out to hundreds, if not thousands of people daily, you should be looking into a streaming platform. If your product falls within a certain type of person and age group, then you’re sure to enjoy infinite success with Twitch sponsorships, as long as you know where to look and what to look for.

Brand and gaming sponsorships

Brand sponsorships are some of the most popular sponsorships that many companies will do. In doing so, they’ll partner up with a streamer and they’ll be required to use those products either on stream or as their main products.

Gaming sponsors

This is where big gaming sponsorships like:

  • Razer
  • SteelSeries
  • Corsair

can come into play because streamers will need to use some form of mouse, keyboard and headset.

Things can get a little more diverse as the streamer brand is stretched out though, and viewers will often see streamers punting things like energy drinks, protein shakes or weight-control substances, the legal kind, of course. Products such as G-Fuel will give their sponsored streamers a code to use upon checkout, giving them a discount, but also a cut to the streamer.

You’ll also often see affiliate links from Amazon where streamers will earn money from purchases that viewers make through the links. This could include products like graphics cards, motherboards, hard drives and everything in between.

Twitch sponsorships that you see are more prevalent for the more popular streamers, and anyone with over 1,000 concurrent viewers will usually have something of this type included on their home screen of the stream.

Sponsored streams

Sponsored streams are a little different in that they’ll usually be through game developers. Companies like Activision and Electronic Arts are really involved in sponsoring streams, and when a new game or update comes out, these companies will pay streamer a set amount per view, while they are playing.

This was notoriously big throughout the year and saw EA paying streamers to play Anthem and Apex Legends, while Activision had streamers paid to play the latest Call of Duty on stream, even in the open beta stages.

How you can make sponsored streams - that you can see in this video - before we continue with the accuracy in statistics.

Accuracy in statistics

As a brand wanting to get involved in sponsoring streamers on these platforms such as Twitch, Mixer or YouTube, you’ll need to ensure that there is some accuracy in the way that statistics are presented. Knowing the audience that specific streamer speaks to and perhaps how much pull they actually have amongst their viewers is paramount to success for businesses.

If you take someone gaming sponsorships by Twitch streamers such as DrDisrespect into account and decide to sponsor his stream with a popular shaving brand, there’s a good chance you’ll resonate with his viewers more than if you were to sponsor another streamer with more followers.

While having more followers is always good, having many followers will only present you with a surface-level understanding of that streamer’s particular impact. A streamer with 5,000 followers, most of whom are all subscribers and constantly participate and buy from that streamers e-store is far more valuable than a streamer with 20,000 views, whose chat is constantly filled with spam, emotes and memes. Engagement is just as important in the world of streaming as it everywhere else.

Exercising creative control

The difficulty with being a brand or a developer and putting backing into a particular streamer is that they’ll need to enjoy your product before they take the sponsorship on board. Now, that’s okay when you’re talking about a streamer like Shroud because it’s likely he can pick and choose what peripheral sponsors he wants purely because he’s so popular.

With smaller streamers, each individual has their own unique and personal brand that they are sharing with the audience. They have their own style, content, flow and schedules but you should always let the streamers be themselves, and not be handcuffed to your brand. This will seem far more disingenuous with the viewers and could result in brand backlash for you and the streamer.

Giving a streamer first access to something unique and interesting is a great idea if you have a belief in your product and know that the streamer is going to enjoy it. Giving them an unfinished game in an alpha phase and asking them to play it and give positive commentary is something that’s going to backfire quickly.

It’s easy to forget that Twitch promotion is a business, and the people watching are not the same as people watching television or something similar, they are active participants in a virtual community that the streamer has created. These people will donate and subscribe to their favourite streamers with their own, hard-earned money.

Finding the influence

The difficulty, in truth, is finding out which streamers and influencers out there can do a good streamer sponsorship job for you as a business. With Loggershut, you’ll be able to find performance-driven influencer marketing through streamers, giving you access to show your product to the world, and have it used and tested in a live situation in real communities.

According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, over 81% of Twitch users are male, and of those people using it, 55% of the users are between 18 and 34 years old. This should speak to your target demographics, and while the streaming site has over 15 million daily active users, only a very small percentage of those will grant some form of engagement.

There are over 9 million channels to sort through on Twitch and each person spends 95 minutes a day on average watching streamers. These are some amazing numbers to speak to if you can direct your message correctly.

 

Twitch gamers

Twitch gamers

Gaming sponsorships

gaming sponsorships

Sponsorship through Twitch

sponsorship through Twitch