Twitch CEO’s Winning Strategy: Charm Streamers with Man, Van, and Plan!

Twitch has been facing competition from YouTube and has been making efforts to retain its top performers by offering them lucrative contracts, revenue cuts, and even Super Bowl tickets. However, due to pressure from its owner Amazon.com Inc. to reduce costs, the company’s new CEO is now exploring a more cost-effective approach to connect with the creative community through a cross-country listening tour.

Since taking over in March, Dan Clancy, the platform’s new guitar-playing, folk-loving CEO, has been traveling around the US in a van, meeting with well-known celebrity streamers and listening to their ideas and concerns.

Along the way, Clancy has met player Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and his wife at a steakhouse in Florida. He has gotten to know rapper T-Pain’s complicated PC setup at his mansion in Georgia. On his personal Twitch account, he’s been streaming Bob Seger-inspired jam sessions with influencers from the front seat of his van. And she’s visited streamer Maya Higa’s animal sanctuary in Austin, where she posed for photos with an emu.

“He asked a lot of questions about how it works and how we use Twitch,” Higa said. “It feels like he wants to know everyone as a person, not just their content.”

The resulting feedback has been invaluable, Clancy said in a recent interview at TwitchCon, a convention in Las Vegas, though he doesn’t take advice wholesale from any particular streamer.

“It’s a feed,” Clancy said. “A lot of people understand the problem. That doesn’t mean they understand the solution.”

Clancy, 59, is an engineer majoring in theater and computer science who arrived at Twitch in 2019 after stops at NASA, Google and Nextdoor Holdings Inc. Earlier this year, he was promoted from president to CEO, taking on a culturally influential figure. a service that Needham & Co recently valued at $45 billion but has struggled with rising costs. Clancy said that even with its own Amazon Web Services discount, maintaining a 24/7 international streaming service is astronomically expensive.

From the beginning, Clancy focused on Twitch’s creative community. In recent years, several rival platforms, most notably Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, have tried to lure Twitch’s top performers with highly lucrative deals that can run into eight figures. Twitch responded with generous offers at times, while also making generous deals that saw many top items keep 70% of their Twitch channels’ subscription revenue. Bidding wars broke out and costs rose.

Eventually, under pressure from Amazon to improve its performance, Twitch executives began increasing the number of ads shown on the platform. Creators, in turn, angrily complained that ads interrupted the streaming experience without offering them adequate compensation. All of this left Clancy struggling with a difficult challenge. How to repair the deteriorated relations with Streamer and at the same time curb the company’s expenses?

For the past decade or so, former CEO Emmett Shear had spent most of his time focusing on technological challenges while rarely interacting with Twitch’s 7 million monthly livestreams, many of whom make a living off the platform. That’s where Clancy saw an opportunity. Soon he fired up his Dodge Ram ProMaster and leaned in for a full on charm offensive. During his four-week tour, called “Dan in the Van,” Clancy met with more than 80 streamers in 15 cities.

“It’s easy for me. I’m outgoing,” Clancy said. “There is a different world where I could have been the creator.”

A Twitch spokesperson said Shear “cared deeply for our creators.”

So far, Clancy’s hands-on approach has proven popular with many of the top streamers who have previously accused the company of being out of touch with their interests. Clancy has given his cell phone number to several influential performers who can now contact him directly with complaints or suggestions.

“What Dan is trying to do by building personal relationships with streamers is going to be the cornerstone of Twitch’s turnaround,” said Arpita Agnihotri, assistant professor of management at Penn State Harrisburg. “Twitch’s CEO needs to have a deeper understanding of the streamer problem.”

“Dan brings the empathy that Twitch has lacked for years back into the limelight,” Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham, a game director who worked at Twitch until last year, recently wrote for X .

But others see Clancy’s cheerful delivery as essentially a vanity project of questionable value to the company. “It’s clear he’s enjoying all the love it’s getting him personally,” said one former Twitch employee. Another pointed out that many of the unpopular changes to the platform, such as increased ad load, were made while Clancy was president and oversaw several parts of the company. Meanwhile, the unusual sight of the CEO of an Amazon-owned company spontaneously streaming for hours on a public forum raises eyebrows, whether he’s playing songs like Country Roads on the piano for just 70 viewers or making pointless urine jokes. .

As he throws himself into Twitch’s creative environment, Clancy examines how the company compensates for his talent. First, Twitch is phasing out special offers for exclusive streaming rights. Competing with YouTube for gaming revenue, Clancy said, “created this bidding war, and I don’t think it’s a sustainable business.”

Not all changes have gone smoothly. In June, Twitch unveiled new rules that restrict streamers from displaying branded content. In response, some threatened a boycott. From his home in Washington, Clancy hopped on his personal Twitch stream and apologized. “The bottom line is we’re messed up,” he said. “It’s up to us.” Shortly thereafter, Twitch withdrew the proposal. Twitch also increased content creators’ share of revenue from ads in 2023, and after announcing it would reduce the subscription revenue split for top performers from 70/30 to 50/50 last year, introduced a new program that allows some streamers to receive a 70/30 subscription revenue arrangement up to $100,000.

By October, the troops seemed to have largely forgiven him. Throughout the TwitchCon event weekend, Clancy wowed his streaming constituents, posed for selfies in a cowboy hat, and took in the praise. During the convention, Twitch announced that for the first time, it will begin allowing users to stream simultaneously on other platforms. This is a crowd-pleasing measure that many content creators had been asking for for years.

At one point, wearing sunglasses and a floral purple blazer, Clancy appeared on stage in a variety show where she playfully handed out coupons for a 70/30 revenue split. Despite such quibbles, Clancy said he’s serious about making the changes that will make Twitch a sustainable business for everyone.

“Our job is to make sure this company is still here 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now,” Clancy said.

He cited as an example Ben “CohhCarnage” Cassell, a longtime Twitch streamer who has pursued the streaming craze well into middle age and now has three children.

“He had a different life before,” Clancy said. “But he can’t go back to it because—what does his resume look like?”