A staple feature of any esports team is their content creators that had to have been recruited for the means of making the esports team more money and more valuable.
How do esports teams recruit content creators? Esports teams primarily scout platforms such as Twitch and YouTube for content creators. Certain teams also have a registration form that content creators can fill out and the esports team vets each prospect to determine who will be officially signed by the team.
In this article, I’ll run you through the actual process I’ve used working for a professional esports team for recruiting content creators. We’ll also talk about what happens after a content creator is recruited.
The Process of Esports Teams Recruiting Content Creators
1. Scout for Prospective Content Creators
Firstly, before content creators can be recruited, we must know they exist. To figure that out, we would go to platforms such as Twitch, YouTube and Facebook to see who is streaming and unaffiliated to another team.
Obviously, professional teams are well aware of most of the main streamers, but we particularly cared for the up-and-coming streamers with good metrics.
Going through the depth of the platform’s search functions allowed us to identify streamers that others may have been missing.
2. Evaluate Content Creators
Once you find prospective content creators, you want to evaluate the actual content creator.
An easy evaluation is their actual personality on stream. How are they acting? Do they represent or conduct themselves in a way that aligns with our esports team? Would they make a good fit into our culture and community? Would they be able to execute well on sponsor activations?
Once you gauge that, we want to now actually look at what matters to business – the numbers. Using platforms such as Twitch Tracker and Social Blade, we can get an understanding of how the stream’s metrics are growing and where they currently are.
Growth is the most value out of everything since that means we can pitch a lower price and hopefully get a higher ROI. Since the content creator themselves know about their growth, they’ll typically ask for more than what someone with their metrics would ask.
This turns it into a risky investment for the esports team. It’s usually in a streamer’s best interest for growth because esports teams usually take the least amount of risk as possible (so they may undercut you a bit), but as long as you have a decent promise for an ROI, they’ll be gain to move forward.
3. Reach Out to the Content Creator
Once a talent acquisition staff member or another employee from the esports team wants to move forward with the content creator, they’ll reach out directly to the creator.
This is most commonly done over email that the content creator publically displays. But assuming they don’t have an email showing, this could be through social media DMs, Discord, LinkedIn or any other means of communication.
Feel free to connect!
4. Schedule an Introduction Call
You always want to see the value of your esports team to the content creator and get them excited at the idea of joining your team.
Especially if you are approaching them instead of them approaching you, you’ll want to make sure that they are hyped to join as to not waste the time of the staff being involved in the vetting process (only for the content creator to say not interested after receiving an offer).
With the email, the purpose is to start a bit of that hype and let them know the team is interested and we want an introductory call.
5. Provide Initial Line of Questioning
Once the call is in session, the esports team will want to provide a line of questioning to better learn about the player and understand if this is a good investment for them.
There are some general questions about the player but they are also asking what I’d call “red flag questions” where after looking at the player’s analytics or stream, the team has questions of things that could be a sign not to recruit players.
This could be an inconsistent amount of streaming, failure to follow their native platform’s guidelines, any controversy around the creator, etc.
6. Schedule a Follow-Up Call
Once the initial call is complete, there may (and likely will be) further follow-up calls.
Some of those calls may be more questions but at one point a call will be able wanting to sign the creator on to the team. At that point, as we will discuss more below, the creator has the ability to negotiate what he wants out of the relationship and discuss any issues the player has with the terms of the contract prior to signing it.
What Happens After an Esports Team Recruits a Content Creator
To provide more clarity on the process, let’s quickly summarize what happens right the player is scouted and how that leads to what the player is during while they actually get recruited and join the team.
Transition Between Scouting and Vetting
We already spoke about this above, but the esports team after scouting for good prospects now wants to vet to determine if the prospect is still good.
In addition to this vetting, the team also wants to find out how the content creator may best fit into the esports team’s strategy.
For example, let’s say the esports team has a big beverage sponsor. Well, if the content creator is known for being a beverage enthusiast and drinks a bunch of different brands and has a good understanding of these types of products, that may fit right into the team’s plan.
Or let’s say the creator has a demographic of most people in the southern US and the team themselves want better metrics in that geographic area for a new partnership with a company they are pursuing.
That could open up more doors for them and will make them more wanting to sign on to that content creator.
Contract Negotiation and Setting Terms of Agreement
Also as we mentioned above at a high level, once both parties express interest in moving forward with an agreement, a contract is brought into play with all the details of the agreement.
This usually has industry-standard information such as providing rights to the esports team, the content creator’s salary and any incentives they may have (meaning if they hit a higher metric in a certain month, they’ll get paid extra).
The contract will also include what the content creator may be expected to do during the term of the contract. This could be a number of expected hours streaming, certain activations with their sponsors, etc.
The content creator in this situation has a lot of control over what he agrees to on the contract. But once he signs it, he either follows all the terms of that contract or risks getting terminated.
That is why the content creator wants to take this process slowly and carefully. Opposed to the esports team, who wants to close them as soon as possible to reduce the time between the creator’s metrics count towards their sponsors and to reduce the overall resources invested in closing the creator.
If the content creator has an agent, they have a lot of understanding on what is a good industry standard to ask in the content and are good at poking at terms in the contract that shouldn’t be there or that can really screw over a player.
If not an agent, a lawyer is helpful as well. That said, many content creators can get advice from their colleagues and parents while having a relatively good understanding of what’s on the contract and how they should approach it.
Services and Transition After Recruitment into Esports Team
Once the contract is signed, the esports team will start sending you everything you need to transition.
This would first start off with introductions with any of the esports team’s staff that you will be in contact with. They will send you off the new graphics you need to include on your stream and on your social media such as a banner and sponsor logos.
They’ll also start tracking your metrics for any incentives you may earn and send you any sponsor and team-specific products to be used on your stream or meant to be used as a giveaway for your own viewers.
Any specific activations that were discussed prior to the contract signing will now start to look to have that implemented in the stream and the team may also provide extra help and resources to ensure that your metrics do grow overall by helping you it now also helps themselves.
A team at this point wants you to succeed, especially if it’s a longer contract, and will do what they need to in order to ensure you do as it also lines them up with more money.
In the end, assuming you find the right team that isn’t actively looking to screw you, it becomes a win-win relationship. At least that’s how we looked at it, but just be really careful about what you accept on the contract with teams that have bad or selfish intent.
