Next Thursday, more than 150 advertisers, brands and partners will gather in London to review content plans and audience data. The format, which for decades belonged to television networks, is being hosted for the first time in Europe by a company that represents creators, according to that company. Arcade, the agency for The Sidemen, announced on the occasion its transformation into a media company, a new leadership team and an expanded roster of creators.
Matt Elek becomes CEO. Co-founder Jordan Schwarzenberger steps back from day-to-day management and keeps an active role. The change at the top is accompanied by a seven-figure investment from Lumina Media, which is meant to fund growth.
Who Arcade represents
Alongside The Sidemen, which C21Media describes as Europe’s largest YouTube group, Arcade is adding Max Fosh, the Friends From Work collective, John Nellis, Faith Kelly, Generation Football, and the founders of the restaurant Fallow, Jack Croft and Will Murray. Friends From Work consists of Arthur Frederick, Arthur Hill, George Clarkey and ItalianBach.
Alongside classic YouTubers, Arcade therefore also represents restaurateurs and a football format. These are creators with their own audiences across genres, which can be packaged into an offer for brands alongside traditional media.
The argument Arcade is selling to advertisers
Schwarzenberger frames the shift from channel to media brand. “Creators aren’t just building channels anymore; they’re building entire media brands: longform, IP, live, branded entertainment. Arcade gives our partners access to the biggest creator media brands in Europe, which operate with the same scale and sophistication as a broadcaster or streamer, but with the trust and audience reach only these elite creators have,” according to C21Media.
An upfront is a tool for turning this thesis into budgets. Television networks use it each year to pre-sell advertising space for the coming season. When a company representing creators adopts the same format, the creator’s position in negotiations with a brand changes from a one-off collaboration to a planned content package backed by audience data.
The investors’ confidence is captured by Thomas Benski, CEO of Lumina Media. “We invested in Arcade because we believe they have the team, talent and ambition to build one of the defining companies in the creator economy,” he said.
What the European market reads into this
For a brand that has so far bought individual collaborations, a place emerges where it buys attention in a package, much as it would from a broadcaster. The difference between a creator with a channel and a creator with a company then lies in who holds the audience data and the joint offer for advertisers. Next Thursday’s upfront will show how much of London’s budgets are willing to pay for this shift.
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