The past week and a halfTwitch star Ludwig Ahgren was on the clock. Whether you’re asleep, awake, or sleepy somewhere in between, Ahgren has kept his stream going to meet the conditions of a “subathon” with each subscription adding ten seconds to a timer. So far he has raised nearly $ 500,000. However, he says that when all is said and done, he will only see a fraction of that money.
When Ahgren started his subathon, he was already a very successful streamer with more than 1.5 million followers. He faced with criticism, then, because he apparently wanted to fill his already packed pockets with even more money by adopting a strategy more common with smaller streamers. He has since walked a contradictory line, giving his marathon stream an event feel in an obvious effort to grab attention (and subscriptions). But he has also discouraged viewers from doing things like spend their stimulus controls on him– and even go so far as to be frank prohibit people who give too many subscriptions as gifts in his chat.
Yesterday he broke down the money element of all of this. During his stream, Ahgren pulled out a spreadsheet detailing his total subscriptions and donation-based earnings for 10 record-breaking days, in which he became the most subscribed streamer on Twitch. The total is $ 471,756 by current estimates.
“But,” Ahgren began, “it’s not that simple. I can’t walk away with all that money because there [are] things in life you have to pay for. That’s called taxes. But even before we get to the taxes, we need to talk about my discount. Because Twitch is taking money away so this isn’t all mine. This is partly from Twitch. “
Twitch’s cut comes in at a hair of over 35% as Ahgren negotiated his current contract in 2020 before rising to his current level of fame. That already reduces the avalanche of cash to his bank account to $ 304,260. That is still an absurd amount! But then Ahgren took into account a rough estimate of both federal and state taxes, which brought him to $ 150,000.
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“States demand taxes, and I live in California,” he said. That’s why, if you don’t know, there are a lot of streamers living in Texas – or maybe YouTubers too – because Texas has no state income taxes. Same with New Hampshire, same with Florida. “
A viewer then asked him why he doesn’t just move to pay less.
“Why not move?” he replied. ‘I don’t really care. I make enough money. I don’t feel like I need more money. I like to pay my taxes. If they want taxes to do things, it could be me [like] Jeff Bezos at Amazon and try to pay as little taxes as possible to make as much money as possible, but that’s not really my MO. I have to pay my share. That’s the whole point of taxes. “
Then Ahgren moved on to payments he planned to spend, starting with his moderation team. A lot of streamers don’t pay for their mods – which isn’t a great system because what moderators do is work, and they deserve to be paid by streamers who have the means to do just that. Ahgren’s subathon literally wouldn’t be possible without his moderation team. Not only did they keep his chat relatively healthy, but a rotating group of 15 moderators also ran the stream at night while Ahgren slept. As a result, he pays the team a total of $ 5,000 per day (plus a base rate) while the team takes part in this grueling stunt. As of yesterday, Ahgren has been left with $ 83,000 – which, he noted, is “still a lot of damn money.”
That brought him to the charity aspect of his subathon. For every subscriber he has at the end of everything, he plans to donate $ 1 to a charity of his choice, which he has yet to name. Yesterday, he had somewhere in the fringes of 80,000 subscribers, dropping his total withdrawal to just $ 3,000. However, he went on to clarify that tax write-offs should put him somewhere in the neighborhood of $ 10,000 or $ 15,000, but he doesn’t know the exact number.
“My accountant has to handle that,” he said.
$ 10,000 or $ 15,000 is still –still– a lot of money, although perhaps not worth 10 days of hundreds of thousands of eyeballs incessantly on you. However, there are several things to keep in mind here: First, the total amount will likely increase even more before the timer Ahgren is off. Truman Show-like bubble. Currently it’s just under 30 hours and viewers haven’t stopped subscribing. This also means that, despite saying that he wants people to hang out with the subscriptions, Ahgren has an incentive to show how little he has personally to earn. It gives dedicated fans a concrete reason to give him more money.
But even if Ahgren only ends with one small Benjamin’s army to show for all this, he thinks it will have been a good use of his time.
“Even [$150,000] is still less valuable than the increase in viewership, total follower gain, the New York Times article, “he said.” We have one New York Times article! That’s insane … The amount of attention all of this has gotten is well worth it. “
After all, attention is what ultimately translates into more money and opportunities in the long run. Stunts are short-lived, even those that last longer than previous attempts of their nature. But making a splash big enough to grab mainstream attention means you’re bringing in all kinds of new viewers. That is how Tyler “Ninja” Blevins grew up, for instance. His displeasure with the mainstream led to years of deals and longevity, despite how quickly the pinnacle of its relevance came and went.
However, this complicates Ahgren’s relationship with his audience. However much (or how little) he gets from this subathon, Ahgren will remain a wealthy person who takes some of his money directly from people poorer than him. That’s the nature of Twitch. When it comes to big streamers, it’s an accepted part of the culture. But it can still be an uncomfortable dynamicIn this case, Ahgren can say he won’t walk away with the lion’s share of what he earns, but that won’t be true for future earnings after the subathon, at which point he’ll be a bigger star than ever. Even then, he will presumably still accept subscriptions and donations as part of regular streams.
The fact that people felt weird when Ahgren launched this subathon when he was already rich is revealing. Many take Twitch’s basic structure for granted, but once you put a little twist on the donation / subscription model, they start asking legitimate questions about why big streamers need even more money. Those questions will always be worth asking – even outside of subathons and other events – as long as the money keeps flowing.