Pokimane Launches Brand Consulting Firm With the Goal to ‘Fix’ esports

Pokimane is one of the most popular streamers and content creators on the planet. She has no shortage of fans and a huge audience that regularly watches her content – and she’s decided to expand beyond that. Imane Anys as her name is has co-founded (and works as the Chief Creative Officer at) RTS. Officially launched on October 27, the brand new talent management and consulting firm boasts quite a lot of founding talent. On top of Pokimane herself, Stuart Saw, formerly of Twitch and Endeavour, as well as Kim Phan from Blizzard and Endeavour and Sue Lee from Twitch have contributed to the project.

RTS’ advisory board also has some big names – Kevin Lin, a co-founder of Twitch, Brian Corrigan, the head of Americas for PUBG Corep, and Karen Brodkin, the executive VP of content strategy and Endeavour are all on board. That’s quite the line-up – and they have big goals for RTS. The company itself has already started to work with companies like Epic Games, the Fortnite World Cup, Facebook and of course Pokimane herself. They’re also going to join up with Sony to manage the annual fighting tournament series EVO – a highlight in the schedule of any fighting games fan.

What is there to fix?

Pokimane openly criticized the current economy of content creators by saying that: “I keep seeing amazing creators that are doing wonders with their content and streams, but they don’t have the support to grow their brand and business operations. They’re spinning their wheels on basic stuff and taking a lot of frustrating partnership deals that don’t work out for either party involved.”

In other words, the current environment is hostile to new talent – which isn’t exactly a secret. It’s difficult to really establish an initial audience in the streaming market, and RTS is planning to help out talented streamers who haven’t yet found their audience.

“I’ve gone through the wringer with these experiences, and we’re building RTS to be able to provide the support, alleviate the workload, and solve this for creators, developers, and brands. My goal is to take my years of experience and make it accessible to newer creators so they don’t need to go through the process I have endured.” Says Pokimane in a press release.

What does the streaming world think?

Right off the bat, content creators like Dr. Disrespect highly praised the company, explaining during a stream that he thinks the company could grow quite big, and that the idea itself is ‘fantastic’. “I saw an announcement that Pokimane is starting an agency for streamers and content creators. I think it’s a fantastic move on her part,” Doc said. “It’s something that we’ve internally discussed for a couple of years now.”

His words go to show that streamers are well aware of how difficult an industry they are in, and how hostile it can be to new talent that wants to enter the space. For there to be an organization exclusively focused on helping out such new streamers is definitely a good thing – though, it’s worth noting that not all streamer-backed and led projects turn out well – so the success of RTS will depend entirely on how they approach this important topic.