International Disruptors: Arcade Media’s Jordan Schwarzenberger On Managing A Group Of Creators Who Have More Than Six Billion Views, How The Creator Economy Is Evolving And Why The Sidemen Are YouTube’s Equivalent Of Bob Dylan

Stewart Clarke
·9 min read
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Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. who are shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, we’re talking to Jordan Schwarzenberger, one of the founders of Arcade Media, a London-based management company that manages YouTube megastars the Sidemen. Schwarzenberger has used skills honed as an agent to help the group of creators move to new levels.

The Sidemen are, in their words, “a group of friends with a few videos online.” Those “few” videos have generated six billion views on YouTube, and spawned chicken shops, a vodka brand, hotel projects, clothes, and a film telling the story of how a group of friends who started out playing video games together became the biggest crew of digital creators in Europe. Their management company is Arcade Media, founded by Jordan Schwarzenberger, Aaron O’Neill and Sam Unwins.

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From Vice To YMU Via LadBible

Schwarzenberger was still in his teens when he scored a job at Vice, before then landing a gig as a strategist within the walls of digital content giant LadBible. The next move was to set up his own agency before a jump to James Grant, which later became talent management agency YMU. There, he became the agency’s first Chief Creative Officer, working with a raft of established star names and breakthrough talent.

Arcade launched in 2021 and Schwarzenberger set about applying what he’d learned working on strategy for the likes of UK presenters Ant and Dec and boyband Take That, and applying it to YouTube creators KSI, Miniminter, Zerkaa, TBJZL, Behzinga, Vikkstar123 and Wroetoshaw – better known by their collective moniker, Sidemen.

They bought into Arcade’s vision, which meant setting priorities. “We created a table with different focus areas and then the guys ranked the things they wanted to do on a one to ten,” Schwarzenberger says. “The top two ideas were a restaurant, and then launching an app, which were the things we did first, and then also launching membership club, which wasn’t at the top of the list, but it managed to sneak in.”

With several ideas ticked off, the template remains. “Things come in and evolve over time, but if you set the strategy right at the beginning, it shouldn’t change that much because the ideas are all big enough that they take a long time creating.”

Focus On Singular IP

Arcade is totally focused on the Sidemen and the idea was never to build a management business with scores of other clients. Schwarzenberger counts former James Grant and YMU topper Neil Rodford as a mentor and says he shared advice that has stayed with him. “He always said to all of us that the definition of management is making things happen that otherwise wouldn’t. I think that’s spot on, it’s basically being proactive and making something from nothing. And when you have a group of creators like the Sidemen, a piece of IP that strong, there’s so much creative opportunity if you are proactive. If you have IP that is strong enough, focus on that singular IP, don’t spread yourself too thin.”

Being proactive means doing more than what Schwarzenberger describes as “managing the inbox,” which in the creator economy means fielding calls from brands that want to work with influencers and digital talent. The Arcade boss dishes the following advice when he meets creators who have great potential: “Fire your agent, fire your manager, if they’re just managing your inbox, if they’re not being proactive. That’s the whole game, the whole point. And we’ve kind of done that to a maximum degree with the guys, I think.”

Despite only being in their late 20s and early 30s, the Sidemen’s ten years in the game marks them out as veterans in YouTube terms. As their audience has grown, they have made the videos they put out bigger and crazier with the weekly Sidemen Sunday show still a cornerstone of their output. Their entrepreneurial spirit allied with the expectations of the YouTube audience mean that when Sidemen launch food or clothing or liquor brands, it’s part of the fabric of what they’re doing, rather than a clumsy bolt-on piece of merchandising. “You’re invested in their lives, their growth, how they came up, and building the businesses is part of the content,” Schwarzenberger says. “People are invested in the story of their success.”

The business side includes subscription service Side+, which launched in 2021 with uncut and uncensored footage of Sidemen content including Try Not To Move, Cheap Vs Expensive Holiday, and Weird Hotels. There is also the XIX vodka brand, Sides fast food restaurant, and even a hotel venture. They also run a huge charity soccer match. The last edition saw the the Sidemen square off against the YouTube AllStars, a team that included Mr Beast, in front of 67,000 fans. The game is, of course, streamed on their YouTube channel.

Creator Economy: Staying Connected

The Sidemen In Action
The Sidemen

While it is said that in traditional TV, loyalty is now to a particular show or celebrity rather than a given channel, the sands have also shifted in the creator economy. Schwarzenberger says it has become harder to build a lasting connection between creators and fans.

“The landscape has shifted since COVID, we’ve come to a point where there is a quite disconnected, transitory, and transactional relationship with content. It’s a lot more about the video than it is about the individual creating it. Now anyone can get 100,000 followers and there’s almost a been, I think, a death of celebrity.”

In that environment, the Arcade boss says, the Sidemen stand out because of the connections they forged with fans in that earlier moment, which he defines as a time pre-COVID and pre-TikTok.

“If you have IP like the Sidemen, that existed in that time that was more connected, it is the equivalent of having Bob Dylan or Prince or Michael Jackson… those catalogs are forever. That’s the equivalent for YouTube, they’ve created a generational connection that is long-lasting because they came up during a time when that kind of connection could be made. I don’t believe that can be done any more.”

TV execs are hungry for younger demos and one of the most overused words among TV commissioners is authenticity. The demo the Sidemen attract and their genuine on-screen personas mean the crew should be TV gold. But when the Sidemen and top creators can earn fortunes working with brands, getting huge engagement in the process, without spending weeks on a shoot, the question becomes why would they? Getting YouTube famous can be a way into traditional TV and film – writer-director Rapman out of the UK is making big-budget Netflix series Supacell after the online success of his web series Shiro’s Story but – YouTube and digital is no longer just a means to an end for the top talent.

“Where TV really suffers is that it just cannot break the format of 16-by-9,” Schwarzenberger says. “Programming needs to be to be attractive to young people, and they want something that is real, but they also just want it where they are consuming it, which is on their phones, and in an on-demand way, and in a shortform format.”

The numbers keep building but there have been missteps. In the unregulated world of YouTube content, KSI made a racial slur in one of the group’s videos. “I’m not perfect, I’m gonna mess up in life, and lately I’ve been messing up a lot,” he said in a subsequent apology posted on social media. The group also said sorry, acknowledging the offence caused, and the video in question was taken down. The furor led to a short break in Sidemen Sundays, which hitherto had been dropping weekly since 2018.

Netflix And Next Steps

Jordan Schwarzenberger
Jordan Schwarzenberger

Internet talent is rarely synonymous with longevity, but ten years on and the Sidemen are still doing their thing. Schwarzenberger says it is his job to create an environment where the seven-strong group want to continue making content.

“It’s very easy for management, agents and people around the talent to make it miserable for them,” Schwarzenberger says. “It’s very easy to help your clients fall out of love with what they do if you’re too pressuring, and if you’re chasing money and bad moves.

“They’ve got families, they want to go enjoy time with their girlfriends, their partners, their wives, their kids, that is the stage they are in now. Our job is to make sure that their lifestyles are protected. And that way it’s still seven guys having fun, feeling in control and doing what they do best.”

But what happens when that approach and making a traditional documentary film collide? It helps that the producer of the film in question, The Sidemen Story, was Pangaea, a prodco formed by a former YouTube content exec, Luke Hyams, and Sunita Mirchandani Hyams. The timing was key as the Sidemen’s decade anniversary was approaching. Schwarzenberger told them he needed two days of their time, which was enough, in the hands of Pangaea, to create a 99-minute doc.

Netflix acquired it for the UK – “which was amazing because the boys wanted Netflix” – and Fifth Season is handling international sales. “I think maybe it’s the start of a greater slate of content or opportunities, whether with Netflix or other partners,” according to Schwarzenberger. “If we can do it in a way whereby the Sidemen can retain control and work with people that they want to work with, I think it can work.”

As the Sidemen enter their second decade, a lot of what was on the list they formulated with Arcade has happened. There’s now talk of a VC fund that will allow the Sidemen to invest directly in interesting start-ups with news expected shortly.

Schwarzenberger sums up broader plan thusly: “The whole thing for us is never to do things for the sake of it, to always to do something that creates disruption in categories that are stale, boring and old, with products and with approaches that are vibrant, young and dynamic.”

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