Twitch is not the place to grow your audience
We sat down with Matt Philips, CEO of MANA Talent Group, to talk about content creation, his pal moistcrit1kal, and Twitch drama.
It’s no secret that content creation is big business — aside from the money that you earn from subscriptions, super chats, donations, etc. It’s hard to navigate the murky waters of managing sponsorship deals, promoting your own content, and actually creating the content yourself. That’s where agencies like MANA Talent Group come in.
Content creation is also a cutthroat business — you either make content and languish in the depths of YouTube’s algorithm somewhere or strike it lucky and go viral, propelling you in front of hundreds of thousands of eyes. Gain enough followers, and you could reasonably make a living from uploading videos or creating posts thanks to ad revenue and donations. That’s a lot of money and clout all of a sudden, and it may be too much for one or even two people alone to manage.
Enter the aforementioned talent agencies — organisations like MANA Talent Group and 100 Thieves. These agencies recruit streamers, esports competitors, and other content creators to create content using their brand, which in turn allows them to negotiate for brand deals and advertisements.
100 Thieves in particular made headlines when a public fallout with one of their talent resulted in the CEO of 100 Thieves, Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag, stating that the company takes 85% of revenue from sponsorship deals — drawing criticism from other organisations, like MANA Talent Group. I sat down with Matt Phillips, CEO of MANA Talent Group, to talk content creation, how it works behind the curtain and more.
Note: The questions and answers have been edited slightly for clarity.
GLHF: Could you start off by giving us some background info about MANA TG?
Phillips: Sure. We started individually before coming together as a group. I started a group several years ago called Double Helix Media, alongside my friend Charlie White (known online as moistcrit1kal.) Eventually, that became Human Media Group alongside some other friends of ours, GibiASMR and her husband Ben. We merged our groups together about four years ago after we got together over dinner and realised that we were doing the exact same thing — we wanted to work with and put creators first. Over the years, we started doing some work with Streamworks, which brought over our other two owners, JimmyHere and Zack.
We’re basically a group of people who have lived near each other or other creators for years, who decided to work together in a business we all love. I’ve known Charlie for 20 years now, we went to middle school together, so we’re not in this business to screw each other or anyone else over. A lot of companies do like to promote that they have “creator first” values, and use that verbiage in promotional materials, but “creator first” has been our motto since the beginning.
GLHF: In 100 Thieves’ very public split with one of their managed talents, Nadeshot publicly stated that 100 Thieves, as a business, takes 85% of promotional revenue splits from their creators. The reason given was that 100 Thieves has a lot of overhead, a lot of employees to pay that do various things for the company. Charlie went on his YouTube and laid out a similar structure to 100 Thieves, but stated that MANA only takes about 15% of a cut. What is the discrepancy between 100 Thieves and MANA, in your opinion?
Phillips: A while back, the industry was in such a different space, especially with regards to esports, where you could get away with just about anything. Honestly, on some level, people probably didn’t think they were getting away with anything, either — they just thought “yeah, this is how it works.” Every company has employees, every company has overhead, so it was just a really weird thing to throw into your explanation for the commission rates.
If you’re getting to a place where you need an extra 10% to survive, you’ve overhired and you’re not running the company the right way, in my opinion. We try not to say it however, and instead we just do it. A lot of times we’ll go to our talent and float them what they need, to make sure they’re taken care of, which is something I think a lot of groups should do more of. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had clients come over because they found out their previous group was scalping off the top.
I can’t divulge who, but we had a client signed up for a pretty large deal. When they realised what deal it was, they mentioned that they had previously accepted that deal but at $20,000 less than what they were getting now. The exact same deal, just less money from their previous company. It sounds so simple, but we believe it’s just about being good human beings and not trying to nickel and dime every single situation like that.
GLHF: In Charlie’s “I Need Your Help” video, a video about the game Omega Strikers, he very clearly outlined that you and him were operating Moist Esports at a massive loss. He outlined why that was and how he was able to keep it afloat, but did so to try and win the Omega Strikers prize money for Moist Esports. Why operate something that costs a hefty chunk of cash just to keep afloat?
Phillips: That’s Charlie through and through, to be honest, but being transparent worked out because the community was able to rally and get us the first place win. Honestly, that’s just how Charlie likes to do things — he’ll never come right out and say “Hey, I need you to donate and send me money.” He looks for opportunities and does what he can to keep the players funded. We’re constantly looking for brand deals as well as Twitch and YouTube income to help fund it, but Moist Esports is truly a passion project on our end. It’s a fun atmosphere and we’ll pay out of pocket to keep it going if necessary.
GLHF: Has there been any challenges in sourcing talent or brand deals in 2022 versus when you started years ago?
Phillips: I’d say it’s gotten better, actually. More and more brands are understanding that creator advertising is a strong, valuable option. We’ve grown our team internally to allow us to reach out to various brands for advertising purposes, and on the creator side, Charlie, Gigi and Jimmy are likeable and can connect to other easily. Our bread-and-butter has been growing organically on the creator side of things, so it works out.
GLHF: How does talent sourcing for MANA typically go? How do you decide to bring someone (or a team of someones) into the MANA fold?
Phillips: We have a whole team dedicated to finding the right fits and making sure we can actually help the people we find. There’s nothing worse than bringing someone in who doesn’t quite fit — we’re not exclusive or anything, but we want to make sure we’re adding value to each other. On the esports side of things, we try to find teams that are ready to go so we can enter a scene and make a splash as opposed to growing the team up.
GLHF: Let’s shift gears a bit — as a content creator, you are undoubtedly aware of the bonfire currently raging over at Twitch. There’s the child predator problem, Twitch killing the 70/30 revenue split for all creators, Twitch killing 1080p viewing in South Korea, and Twitch ignoring or failing to address the many, many problems smaller creators face on the platform. Any thoughts?
Phillips: It’s awfully confusing. I think the only real reason that they keep talent is that they are Twitch. They have the better platform currently, with more chat features and a tighter community. Despite that, they are trying their absolute hardest to get people off the platform with these recent choices. Sometimes you make tough decisions and not everyone is gonna agree with them, but these are changes that almost nobody agrees with. It’s all negatives coming out!
Their only win in recent months was the gambling ban, and even that is a half-measure because people are going to find loopholes to keep streaming gambling. It’s a real shame because everyone I know at Twitch are good people, but they’re not the ones making these decisions.
GLHF: What do you think it would take to cause a mass exodus away from Twitch to YouTube Gaming or some other competitor?
Philips: The next step is YouTube actually trying to fight this fight. Finding streams on YouTube is awful at the moment, and it doesn’t have the same feel that Twitch does with its chat and community features. So I think it’s more about YouTube stepping up than on Twitch stepping down — Twitch is already upsetting everybody, so if YouTube spruces up their side a bit it’ll happen.
As far as other competitors, the only one I’ve heard of recently is Medal.tv. It’s a little early to say on that front, because breaking into the streaming game is tough. You have companies like Microsoft and Facebook that weren’t able to crack it at all, and they have unlimited resources. It’s the same answer to the question “why don’t all the big creators get together and start a new site?” — It’s unbelievably tough to crack into that market.
GLHF: A lesser thought about part of this whole ordeal is smaller content creators. Twitch has been apathetic to smaller creators for a while now, with most viewers coalescing around big streamers like HasanAbi and, no offence, Charlie. Any advice for up-and-coming streamers and creators to break into the business?
Phillips: Twitch is not the place to grow your audience. Anything short of a miracle will not help you grow there. TikTok is short-form content that is a great place to grow and bring your audience over, so you’ve got a new generation of people cracking that formula and learning how to play the game.
I’d say the best thing to do is an all-platform approach. TikTok wants you to grow because that’s their platform — you have people hitting five or ten million followers on TikTok. You need to take that and push it over to other platforms, essentially. So if you stream 40 hours a week on Twitch and you’re not seeing any growth, that’s why.
GLHF:Where do you see the future of content creation five or ten years down the line?
Phillips: That’s such a good question…and honestly, I’m on the fence. I might get hate for saying this, but honestly, I think it might be Web3. We’re hearing about it left and right in the space, and there’s a big push for it, but also people are sceptical of it — ourselves included. I haven’t seen one shred of evidence that I should be thinking about Web3 properly, but we’re starting to see a lot of creators, especially on the streaming side, take more chances. Ludwig and xQc have come out with TV game show styled things, so more people are likely gonna use their platform to move into traditional media spaces. You can credit Mr. Beast with starting that trend.
GLHF: Any comments on the streamer drama that erupted over the past month?
Phillips: I’m with Charlie on this one — you can’t let streaming encompass your entire personality. You have to be normal sometimes. Everyone runs to Twitter immediately for extra likes and whatnot, but honestly, not everything has to be content. I know that seems hypocritical since Charlie posts twice a day and streams all the time, but we do things as well that aren’t content for the content mill.
A big thank you to Matt of MANA Talent Group for taking the time to talk about content creation and streaming with us.
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