Gentle Mates, Karmine Corp, Aegis or Team du Sud… these names may not mean anything to you, but the entrepreneurs behind these e-sport teams are very popular with young audiences. It is in fact the YouTube and Twitch stars Squeezie, Gotaga, Kameto, Mister MV and Sixen, who each have several million subscribers, who founded these professional structures.
These new kinds of teams competed in Nice on February 7 and 8 during “LFL Days”, two days of competition around the video game League of Legends. No less than six of the ten competing teams were founded by influencers. A first, which resulted in a record audience of 234,000 spectators on Twitch during the match between Gentle Mates, the team of Squeezie, Gotaga and Brawks, and the Karmine Corp of the streamer Kameto and the YouTuber Prime.
If influencers are rushing to create professional video game teams, it is because this new “esport-tainment” business model, mixing entertainment and competition, attracts crowds. By thousands. “It’s more than a fashion, it’s a real groundswell that impacts the e-sport ecosystem” explains Bertrand Amar, e-sport director of Webedia. The latest France Esports Médiamétrie barometer revealed that 10.8 million Internet users are interested in competitive video games. An opportunity to seize.
Surrounding yourself with content creators to support e-sport clubs is a winning bet. In 2020, Kameto founded the Karmine Corp team. With his brand, the former professional player and now streamer on Twitch has paved the way for other large structures, like the Mandatory of Adrien “ZeratoR” Nougaret, creator of the charity event ZEvent.
“La Karmine is more than a club, it’s a phenomenon,” assures Arthur Perticoz, its general director. In September, the team brought together 28,000 fans at La Défense Arena. “All the big clubs that are launching today are supported by influencers. “It’s an obligation to target young people,” he adds. The French club, which wishes to “be one of the biggest in the world” must make its place in an ecosystem which is concentrated around twenty international “top clubs”, following the football trend.
The documentary “Thank you Internet!” on the rise of Lucas Hauchard (Squeezie), released last January, highlighted the faces behind his e-sport structure Gentle Mates. Alongside him, Gotaga, a former professional Call of Duty player, has more than 4 million subscribers on YouTube. This is not his first attempt. In 2013, he already co-founded the Vitality structure, which is still active. Gentle Mates is therefore worn by the two most followed streamers in France, a label claimed today. The team was originally named “SBG”, for Squeezie, Brawks and Gotaga. The three young men then wanted to remain incognito.
“Squeezie is taking risks to join such an exposed project. He has always been a very big gamer, but between playing video games and entering the e-sport business, there is a whole world,” explains Samy Mazouzi, e-sport director of Gentle M8. “What he wants is to introduce e-sport to all the people who don’t know this universe.”
And it works. When these teams play, the audiences swell drastically. They actually benefit from an advantage: unlike teams that start from scratch, these “teams” of influencers arrive with a pre-existing community. “Kameto created his team when he was already very popular, so he brought his entire community on board as supporters. The power of Karmine today is unique, it is watched all over the world,” says Bertrand Amar, e-sport director of Webedia.
But an e-sports team comes at a cost. As in any other discipline, it is not enough to line up millions to win competitions. But who says sponsor means more income and therefore more budget to, in particular, attract the best players. It is therefore also a financial competition that takes place between these creators.
Orange, Michelin, Redbull and the CIC have therefore bet on the Kameto team. “Sponsors quite naturally gravitate towards the “biggest” influencers. Orange is not a partner of Kamel but still benefits from its image,” explains Arthur Perticoz. Behind the Squeezie team are Deezer, Aldi and Razer.
Between the costs of gaming houses (living and training spaces intended for professional teams), the salaries of players and coaches and those of support functions (marketing, accounting, technical network, etc.), the cost of a team is pupil. “A big project can cost up to 60,000 euros per month, between the entire technical team, the networks, the players, the staff, the coach,” estimates Maxime Tchoroukian, “Sixen”, YouTuber, streamer and founder of the South Team. In the European League of Legends (LEC), the cost is estimated between 2 to 4 million euros per year on average.
Content creators found these teams “above all to have fun with their community and out of passion. If they did it for the money, it would not be the best investment of their life,” explains Arthur Perticoz, who has around twenty employees at his side to manage KCorp, profitable since 2023 only. The brand’s revenues are shared in thirds between merchandising, sponsors and leagues. This year, KCorp, still “just breaking even”, aims to exceed 10 million euros in revenue.
Once these teams are launched, the role of the influencers is mainly that of embodying and representing their team, at the forefront. They unite fans, but cannot manage their business alone. “Kameto is live on Twitch from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. Managing a business of this size on the side is not possible,” underlines Arthur Perticoz. Especially since content creators, specialized in entertainment, “do not necessarily have the necessary skills in finance, entrepreneurship or management.” However, they remain present behind the scenes, “operationally involved” alongside their associates, recruited to help the project grow.
Creating an e-sport team is therefore above all an opportunity to work on your image. “Our goal is to show that we are still a fashionable product, because we have to generate income and continue to do what works,” says Sixen. As soon as they can, these content creators appear alongside their players, the main actors in their success story in e-sport.
