Rising Above the Game: Exploring Growth Strategies in Live-Streaming

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Daniel Wentzel
• Subject Area: Management and Marketing
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 571904305

Over the last decade, the live-streaming of gaming has evolved from a niche phenomenon to a global entertainment category. As a consequence of this rapid growth in popularity, live-streaming has also evolved into a potentially lucrative form of employment, with streamers turning a playful activity into a professional career. Some of the most successful streamers achieve celebrity status, attracting tens of thousands of viewers for each of their live streams and generating millions of dollars in revenue. However, for the vast majority of gamers, the dream of becoming a professional streamer remains elusive. Hence, becoming a “pro” is a formidable challenge for aspiring streamers. One particular challenge is the fact that the core activity – publicly playing games – offers little possibility for differentiation, with vast numbers of streamers playing and broadcasting the same games. Hence, this raises the question of what aspiring streamers can do to rise from the masses and to achieve success. While research in marketing has shown a great interest in influencer marketing and the creator economy, most of these studies focus on established influencers/creators. That is, existing research has little to say about how aspiring creators can build a community from scratch. In this research, we aim to address this important gap in the literature. To do so, we conceptualize streamers as human brands that will not only need to define a particular identity for themselves, but will also need to devise strategies to systematically grow their brand. To identify effective growth strategies, we plan to conduct three related studies that rely on different methods. The first study is planned as a large, qualitative study where we intend to interview professional streamers and their followers. This interview study will allow for an initial understanding of the growth strategies employed by successful streamers. The second study is planned as a quantitative study based on a longitudinal dataset linking the decisions of roughly 1,000 streamers to the development of their viewer base over a 5-year period. Finally, the third study will focus on the launch of a major game and will follow a sample of streamers that decide to start playing this game. In this part of our research, we are interested in understanding how streamers manage the transition to a new game, focusing on an analysis of the language they use in their streams at this critical junction point. Taken together, the results of the three studies can significantly enhance our understanding of how streamers can compete in the growing, but very competitive market for gaming streaming. While our analysis will mostly focus on the Twitch platform, the results should also have relevance for other live-streaming platforms and/or content categories where creators have to build a personal brand by relying on largely standardized content.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Netherlands, USA
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dhruv Grewal, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Dennis Herhausen