For the last week and a half, Twitch star Ludwig Ahgren has been vigilant. Whether asleep, awake, or sleepy somewhere, Ahgren has kept his flow running to meet the terms of a “subatona” in which each subscription adds ten seconds to a timer. So far it has raised nearly $ 500,000. However, he says that when it is all over, he will only see a fraction of that money.
When Ahgren started his subattone, he was already a very successful streamer with over 1.5 million followers. He faced criticism, therefore, due to the fact that they want to look like pockets already packed with even more cash using a more common strategy among smaller streamers. Since then, he has drawn a contradictory line, giving his marathon broadcast a sense of event in an obvious attempt to capture attention (and subscriptions). But it also discourages viewers from doing things like this spending his stimulus checks on him“And even get to the strip.” ban people who give away too many subscriptions in your chat.
Yesterday he broke the monetary element of all this. During its current, Ahgren posted a spreadsheet showing his income based on donations and subscriptions over 10 record days, in which he became the most subscribed transmitter on Twitch. The total, according to current estimates, is $ 471,756.
“However,” Ahgren began, “it’s not that easy. I can’t get away with all that money because it’s there. [are] things in life that you have to pay for. This is called taxes. But even before we get to the taxes, we need to talk about my cut. Since Twitch takes money, that’s not all mine. That’s part of Twitch. “
Twitch’s cut exceeds 35% because Ahgren negotiated his current contract in 2020 before reaching his current stardom level. This already brings the avalanche of cash into your bank account up to $ 304,260. This is an absurd amount of money. But then Ahgren considered a rough approximation of both federal and state taxes, which reduced him to $ 150,000.
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“States require taxes and I live in California,” he said. “That’s why, if you don’t know, there are a lot of live broadcasts in Texas, or maybe also on YouTubers, because Texas doesn’t have state taxes for income tax. The same with New Hampshire and the same with Florida “.
One viewer asked him why he doesn’t move just to pay less.
“Why don’t you move?” answered. “I really don’t care. I make enough money. I don’t think I need more money. I am happy to pay my taxes. If they want taxes to do things, I could be [like] Jeff Bezos on Amazon and get up trying to pay as little tax as possible to make as much money as possible, but this is not really my MO..I want to pay my fee. That’s the whole point of taxes. “
Ahgren then moved on to the payments he intends to issue, starting with his moderation team. Many streamers don’t pay for their modifications, which isn’t a great system, because what moderators do is work and they deserve to be paid by the streamers who have the means to do so. Ahgren’s subattone would literally not be possible without his moderation team. Not only have they ensured that their chat remains relatively sane, but a rotating group of 15 moderators has directed the broadcast at night while Ahgren has also slept. As a result, you pay the team a total of $ 5,000 a day (plus a base fee) as the team participates in this grueling trick. As of yesterday, all this left Ahgren with $ 83,000, which, as he noted, is “still a lot of damn money.”
This led him to the charitable aspect of his subatona. For each subscriber he has at the end, he intends to donate $ 1 to a charity he chooses, which he has not yet named. Yesterday it had 80,000 subscribers to the dance floor, reducing its total amount to just $ 3,000. However, he went on to clarify that tax cancellations should bring him up to $ 10,000 or $ 15,000, but he does not know the exact number.
“That’s for my accountant,” he said.
There are still $ 10,000 or $ 15,000 left …yet—A lot of money, although it may not be worth 10 days of hundreds of thousands of non-stop eyeballs. However, there are several things to keep in mind here: on the one hand, the total amount of money will likely increase even more before the timer releases Ahgren from his Truman Show-as a bubble. It is currently just under 30 hours away and viewers have not stopped subscribing. This also means that Ahgren, while saying he wants people to cool off with subscriptions, has an incentive to reveal how little he can personally do. It provides dedicated fans with a specific reason to give it more money.
But even if Ahgren only ends up with one small Benjamin’s army to prove all this, he believes it will have been a good use of his time.
“Even [$150,000] it is still less valuable than increasing the number of viewers, the total gain of followers, the New York News article, “He said.” We have a New York News article! It’s crazy … The amount of attention all this has received is worth it ”.
Attention, after all, is what will ultimately translate into more money and opportunities in the long run. Stunts are short-lived, even lasting longer than any previous attempt of their nature. But making such a big touch that it attracts the main attention means attracting all kinds of new viewers. Of course how Tyler “Ninja” Blevins grew up, for example. Its reception with the mainstream was fueled by years of supply and longevity despite the speed with which its relevance grew.
This, however, complicates Ahgren’s relationship with his audience. No matter how much (or little) he makes of this subatona, Ahgren will continue to be a rich person who will take a piece of his money directly from people poorer than him. Such is the nature of Twitch. When it comes to great streamers, it’s an accepted part of the culture. But yes it can still be an awkward dynamic. In this case, Ahgren may say he doesn’t keep most of what he earns, but that won’t be so true in future post-subatonic gains, at which point he’ll be a bigger star than ever. Even then, presumably, it will still accept subscriptions and donations as part of regular flows.
The fact that people felt weird when Ahgren threw this subatona when he was already rich is revealing. Many take for granted the basic structure of Twitch, but as soon as you take a small turn in the donation / subscription model, they start asking legitimate questions about why big streamers need even more money. These questions are always worth asking, even outside of subatons and other events, as long as the money keeps flowing.