Star customized blessing videos, a big business worth $1 billion

Wen| Sports industry ecosystem

If you and your best friend are both basketball fans, imagine playing a video at a party on his birthday, in which LeBron James read his name and send his birthday greetings with emotion. What would it be like?

You may find this impractical. But if I told you that all this could be achieved with a little money (which is definitely within the reach of ordinary people), would you be tempted?

Some people noticed this business, and in just a few years, the company’s market value reached US$1 billion. In this article, let’s take a look at this company. nbsp;

Emotional value is becoming more and more valuable.

This concept, which was only proposed in the early 21st century, has now become an indispensable part of people’s lives and is constantly reshaping people’s consumption habits.

In the world of sports, the “premium” brought by emotion has a more intuitive display of a player’s signature on surrounding products, and the price tag can add a few more zeros; if you have the opportunity to meet this player, you can queue up for hours and even pay a high fee for this. Previously, the chaos of “Messi Toast” was a typical example.

Under today’s business system, the opportunities for ordinary people to have direct or indirect contact with celebrities have been shaped into immeasurable sky-high assets. Among them, through factors such as brokerage companies, portrait copyrights, and resource relationships, it has become a privilege that most people simply don’t have access to.

Just a few years ago, in a small building in Chicago, the United States, three high-spirited young people sat together and tried to change everything with something called “Cameo.”

What is Cameo?

Founded in 2017, Cameo is a celebrity fan interaction platform. Its core business is to allow fans to pay to place orders and select specific stars to customize blessing videos for them.

As of 2023, more than 50,000 celebrities have registered to “take orders” on the platform, covering a wide range of categories. From stars from major leagues to Hollywood actors, they all sell their own customized services on Cameo for $5 to $3000.

To give a few examples that sports fans are familiar with: NBA celebrity Ci Shiping is priced at US$1400, and Gary Payton is priced at US$625. For the less well-known Thomas Jr., Oden and others, ordering a highly emotional 60-second video with lines specified by you only costs about US$100.

As a world basketball legend, Paul Gasol’s price on Cameo is only US$300, far lower than other stars in his league. This is because Gasol himself issued a statement immediately after entering the platform that all revenue generated by the platform will belong to his own foundation and be directly invested in projects to help obese children.

At the same time, there are also many retired athletes and celebrities who use Cameo as a stable revenue channel. According to Krypton estimates based on order volume, Laval Bauer, who was once popular in North American social media, has sent more than 1500 videos on Cameo, with a net income of more than 150,000 US dollars.

Analysis by research firm IBISWorld points out that fans ‘followers of idols often carry strong emotional projections, and personalized blessing videos can amplify this sense of belonging. In the same way, compared to buying a football star jersey and hanging a signed photo at home to eat dust, this paid experience of allowing idols to directly say their names is obviously more competitive and provides consumers with emotional value that cannot be achieved in physical objects.

In addition, many owners of small and medium-sized businesses customize videos on Cameo, using this low-cost way to invite celebrities to “platform” their activities.

From a platform perspective, as of 2024, the total transaction volume on Cameo has exceeded US$310 million. Based on an average price of US$150, there are more than 2 million videos. It is certain that Cameo’s monetization model has been implemented and gradually It has grown into an important part of the professional sports fan ecosystem.

In order to understand the story behind this unique business logic, we also paid on Cameo and chatted with the founder of the platform.

An entrepreneurial drama with a whim

Selfies are the new autograph.

Cameo founder Stephen Glenis ‘planning for his work comes from this point of view.

Cameo founder Stephen Glenis

In 2016, in order to prepare a special birthday surprise for his little nephew, Glenis invited his NFL agent friend to contact a star to record a blessing video. After hearing his idol personally sending him blessings, his little nephew was so excited that he burst into tears.

While feeling happy for his nephew, Glenis suddenly realized his entrepreneurial opportunity: “I thought at the time that there might be an untapped need lurking in the fan market.”

So, Glenice immediately brought in this broker friend and another technician with rich social media experience to complete the formation of the start-up team in the shortest possible time. On March 15, 2017, Cameo was officially launched.

Three founders of Cameo

Glenis was right, and users swarmed in.

With limited promotion methods, the platform is growing rapidly and independently, constantly breaking through the circle, and has been at the forefront of the app store download list several times. The market’s recognition is even more convincing. Just one year after its launch, Cameo received US$12.5 million in Series A financing from Silicon Valley Lightspeed Capital; it was also named “the World’s Top 50 Genius Companies” by Time Magazine in the same month.

“Everything happens too fast, and new problems arise every day. We can’t plan in advance, making it completely too late for people to respond.” Glenis told Krypton.

Financing gave it the confidence to grow rapidly and expand, but Cameo ushered in a real outbreak during the epidemic.

Since 2020, with celebrity performances cancelled, sports events suspended, and celebrities lost their business activities, Cameo has become a cost-free path to monetize them. Even Boxer Mayweather, hip-hop king Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and others opened their own Cameo accounts during the epidemic and began taking orders.

Snoop Dogg’s customized video

At the same time, ordinary people trapped in their homes have not only lost sports, music and other entertainment, but also faced income scares, and Cameo has become an emotional outlet for solace. Demand and supply exploded at the same time, and Cameo also ushered in its peak moment.

According to Glenis, the total revenue of the Cameo platform reached US$100 million in 2020, a 4.5-fold increase from the previous year, and the number of employees increased from 100 to 400.”Due to travel restrictions, we can only Recruit telecommuters across the country, and we have even opened new offices in several major cities.”

While the platform level is soaring rapidly, capital is gradually convinced by Cameo’s growth rate. It is understood that Cameo raised US$50 million (Series B) and US$100 million (Series C) in financing in 2020 and 2021 respectively, and its valuation has reached US$1 billion, officially joining the ranks of “unicorns.”

However, as the saying goes, times create heroes, and heroes are also timely. In the face of the torrent of the times, any individual’s efforts are insignificant.

As the epidemic came to an end, just as Glenis was recruiting troops, replenishing senior management, and preparing to do a big job, the drama suddenly ended.

“Growth pain”

The epidemic has prompted the emergence of a large number of alternative products, and when people’s lives return to normal, these alternative products will inevitably face a burst bubble.

A few years ago, this was the case in Liu Genghong’s live broadcast room where millions of people watched and practiced every day, and so was Cameo.

When celebrities return to announcements and consumers return to offline, the number of users and usage stickiness on the platform have experienced a sharp decline. Correspondingly, Cameo’s operating costs remain high.

“I think we should be the team in the world that knows the most about growing pain.” Glenis told Krypton.

“Cost is one aspect. The previous decision to be forced to recruit remote employees in large numbers has also caused the company to lose our culture to a certain extent. Everyone is scattered across the country, which makes everything difficult to coordinate.”

Layoffs are the first reaction of many companies when faced with irreversible difficulties, and Cameo is no exception.

Although the top management team was just replenished and improved during the epidemic, as the chain reaction of the bubble burst became more severe, huge operating costs and deteriorating financial conditions forced Cameo to launch a round of large-scale layoffs in the next two years. According to “The Wrap” data, after Cameo’s layoffs ended in July 2023, the number of employees dropped sharply from a peak of 400 to only 50.

Misfortunes never come alone. In the same year, an American political fanatic organization used the Cameo platform to fabricate videos of many American stars accusing Ukraine President Zelensky through splicing and editing, which caused an uproar. Cameo was even named and criticized by authoritative media such as CNN.

The misinformation campaign involved Elijah Wood, boxer Mike Tyson and others. After the storm broke out, the two stars subsequently deactivated their Cameo accounts, which also caused the Cameo platform to suffer from controversial financial conditions, and worsened its reputation and corporate image.

Glenis did not respond to this matter to Krypton.

Source: Chicago Sun

As mentioned above, not only individuals but also companies placed orders on the Cameo platform before.

In July last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a statement stating that Cameo failed to ensure that paid videos on the platform were clearly marked as advertising content, violating relevant consumer protection laws.

According to Fortune, due to financial difficulties, Cameo was unable to even repay the FTC’s original fine of US$600,000. After several twists and turns, he reached a settlement with the New York State Attorney General’s Office and successfully reduced the fine to US$100,000. The problem was solved.

Financial layoffs, legal disputes, and public opinion storms, Cameo, which has grown into a “unicorn” in a short period of time, has also experienced challenges that many companies will only experience in decades in a short period of time.

However, this tempering of “growth pain” has also reshaped Cameo’s survival rules.

Drive smoothly after the wind and waves

From 2024 to 2025, Glenis wants to give Cameo cohesion again, and the first thing he is doing is to bring the core soul of the company back to Chicago, where the story began.——

For many reasons in life, Glenice lives in Miami. But in order to maintain high-frequency and efficient communication with his colleagues at headquarters, he would fly to Chicago every Monday at 6:20, sit in the office at 9:30 on time, and then take the 6:46 flight every Thursday to return to Miami to return to his life.

“Remote collaboration is an indispensable part of Cameo, but I now pay more and more attention to face-to-face communication.” Glenis said.

In terms of business planning, Glenis revealed when he visited the podcast in November last year that Cameo no longer blindly pursues the number of users under a single structure, but is constantly trying to use more precise methods to make innovative breakthroughs in the monetization model., seeking further development.

For example, CameoX, launched by Cameo at the end of 2023, has recently created a lot of growth for the company. Under this new model, those who can settle in and receive orders are no longer limited to celebrities. Ordinary people can also settle in and show their charm and uniqueness., in order to earn commissions on video production.

According to official data, more than 31000 amateur creators have settled in CameoX, and the transaction volume of customized video has reached one million. Compared with Cameo’s pure service attributes, CameoX has a stronger sense of community, and this is something Glenis attaches great importance to.

“The nature of fame has changed dramatically. Some of our most successful artists are home-grown digital creators who are not celebrities in the traditional sense of the word, but have extremely loyal fan bases. Platforms like Ins, TikTok and YouTube can create new stars overnight, and CameoX will have the same features.”

Cameo is also trying together with different social media platforms

In the past, Cameo’s core products were nothing more than star resources + order buttons + video uploads. The ceiling of this simple combination has been verified. Driven by venture capital, the over-expanded corporate structure ultimately overwhelmed this originally lightweight business by heavy operating burdens.

Therefore, jumping out of the inherent model and creating a platform that has growth and social attributes for users is a way to find incremental exports.

It is worth mentioning that models similar to Cameo have also appeared in China. In 2019, a platform called WishR Star launched a customized celebrity blessing service. However, the platform ultimately failed to break through and the website was in a semi-abandoned state.

Analysts pointed out that there are three main reasons for the failure of WishR’s satellite-sharing: First, domestic stars are more cautious about personal brand management; second, the popular form of Live streaming tipping on the Internet overlaps with the strong interactive attributes of customized videos provided to consumers; and finally, it is the complexity of the regulatory environment.

After actually downloading the App, Krypton believed that the most important reason for its failure at the business level was the excessive average pricing.

Nowadays, some of the star resources enjoyed by WishR can be seen that even slightly famous actors start at thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan.

Back to Cameo. When the storm of public opinion gradually subsided, the platform began to recalibrate its development direction in a more prudent manner from barbaric expansion to refined operations, from chasing traffic to rebuilding the trust system.