Cazé S/A: the internet “nerd” became a business

Streamer Casimiro Miguel started doing live broadcasts out of boredom. No planning, no defined schedule, talking about everything and in the most informal way possible. It became a phenomenon – among the highest paid in the world on the Twitch platform.

In addition to Twitch’s 2.4 million followers and 75,000 subscribers who pay to see its content on the internet, stars such as Ronaldão and Neymar have also publicly rated the “nerdola”. Now, big brands are also seeing the charisma of the carioca as a business opportunity. GloboPlay, Mercado Livre and Quinto Andar were the first to close partnerships, in a growing list.

“During the pandemic I started doing lives to distract myself in free time. To be honest, I never saw the live as a commercial opportunity, but something I could have fun and cheer up the crowd”, Cazé told Pipeline. “Until the beginning of this year, I practically didn’t make commercial content, by my own decision, but I realized that it would be very important for us to bring more content and make the live bigger and bigger.”

Its eclectic content, which ranges from Vasco games to reactions to cleaning the fridge and assembling a lunch box posted by mothers on YouTube, and the catchphrases in a debauched and humorous Carioquês ​​— “got this one?”, “that’s very strong!”, “that daddy, huh?” or even the monosyllabic “iiiiiih” — has also attracted the attention of companies outside the sporting world. There are contracts that seem more obvious, such as the one he signed with Amazon Prime to comment on Copa do Brasil games alongside Tiago Leifert. But recently, Quinto Andar announced a partnership with the streamer.

The painting “Stalker de Apê” shows the carioca snooping around on the platform, taking advantage of the fact that Cazé, who is married, is looking for a property. The program was inspired by one of the streamer’s most successful paintings, in which he reacts to videos on the YouTube channel of Augusto Braga, a real estate broker specializing in mansions. Here, in a more down-to-earth version.

“Everyone knows I’ve always enjoyed making videos of houses. There are some that we take as a joke, but there are others that actually make us want to live”, she said. The series premiered on the last day 2, raising the audience of Quinto Andar’s homepage by 44% that day. Episodes air once a month until January.

For a long time, plans to get married and move were postponed for financial reasons, according to Cazé — “what a little chat, huh?”. But that was no longer a problem. The streamer’s exact income is unknown, but a Twitch data leak last year records $576,000 on the platform as of October 2021 — excluding profits on YouTube, where there are at least two official channels, one with more than 2.5 million subscribers.

The figure would place Cazé among the highest paid in the world in this business model, in terms of revenue in local currency. In 2019, Cazé’s profit from Twitch was just R$100.

After all, he held the record for simultaneous accesses to a live on the platform, with the then unprecedented exhibition of the first episode of Netflix’s “Neymar: The Perfect Chaos”. On January 24, the eve of the documentary series’ premiere, the channel managed to reach 540,000 Twitch users simultaneously. In another similar partnership, Cazé watched first-hand episodes of the reality show “Túnel do Amor”, on GloboPlay.

In live, Cazé commented on the leak of his earnings with Twitch. “It’s less, I got less. But so, I don’t imagine that anyone thought I earned little here, right? If I do six hours of live a day, fighting sleep, eating poorly, sleeping poorly, it’s because I make satisfying money,” said the streamer. The lives air at dawn. “Even though I’m fat and have this beard, I’m not Santa Claus,” he added.

But the improvised way also cost dearly. According to him, some poorly arranged contracts reduced his net income. “There’s an amount there, which is pretty much my size, which was on the day of Vasco’s game. I got 22k subs [assinantes] in one day. That money went 100% to Atlético Paranaense. Because I signed a contract, which I thought was good. I didn’t think I was going to make all that money. Atlético scored 3×0 against Vasco, who was relegated, and I paid Nikão’s salary and all the guys there”, he said in the live.

The streamer, who prided himself on taking care of his career alone, had to hire the agency Live Mode to advise him on managing his image and business rights. “Until last year, I took care of everything practically on my own, always counting on the support of my friends. From that year, I realized that I would need a company to be able to fulfill my dream of broadcasting football games and started the marriage with LiveMode,” he told Pipeline. “For me, it’s much better that I can just focus on my little live.”

The agency is also the interface with brands and digital platforms. “We are not an influencer agency, nor do we intend to be”, explains Felipe Tebet, head of digital platforms at LiveMode and responsible for Casimiro’s account. “Cazé is an exception because he has a great dream in common with us. He always wanted to broadcast games on his live and in a different way, which brings a younger audience that was disconnected.”

This year, Casimito’s channel became the first to officially broadcast the Carioca championship outside of open TV. In April, it closed a contract to show Brasileirão games – which earned it sponsorship from brands such as PagSeguro and Mercado Livre, in addition to the sports betting platform Betway.

Now 28 years old, Casimiro studied Social Communication at Faculdades Integradas Hélio Alonso (FACHA), but did not graduate. If he had depended on his parents, he would have studied law, a course in which he was approved at a public university in Rio de Janeiro, and he did not want to go any further. But the “papinho”, as Casimiro would joke, stuck.

Source: Value Pipeline