WME signs digital stars LadBaby
WME has signed digital stars LadBaby, aka husband-and-wife team Mark and Roxanne Hoyle, whose cover of Starship’s ’We Built This City’ beat Ariana Grande to last year’s UK Christmas number one.
The Hoyles have also signed to Joe Sugg and Caspar Lee’s WME-backed management company, Margravine Management. The trio will “work to build out the family’s platform across licensing, merchandise, literary and live, as well as their original content programming”, according to the agency.
To date, LadBaby have nearly four million followers on Facebook, and are the most successful creators on the platform’s Fan Subscriptions service. In total, they have an audience of nearly 6m across all platforms.
In 2018 LadBaby beat Ariana Grande and Ava Max to win the UK’s Christmas No1 spot with their parody of ‘We Built This City’ (which changed the lyrics to “… on sausage rolls”), released in aid of foodbank charity the Trussell Trust.
Other WME-repped digital stars include Sugg, Jake Paul and Sean ‘Jacksepticeye’ McLoughlin.
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.
Superstar UK YouTuber Jacksepticeye signs with WME
William Morris Endeavor (WME) has added to its growing roster of digital stars by signing popular YouTuber Jacksepticeye from its London office.
Irish-born, British-based Jacksepticeye, real name Sean McLoughlin, has more than 21 million YouTube subscribers (50th in the world), along with nearly 6m followers on Instagram and 5m on Twitter. McLoughlin is best known for his ‘Let’s Play’ gaming series and vlogs of his life, and has also embarked on a live career with his How Did We Get Here tour, which played mid-sized venues in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the UK and the Republic of Ireland.
Representation by WME is for all areas, and sees McLoughlin join a digital roster that also includes internet personalities Joe Sugg, Andrea Russett and Jake Paul. He continues to be represented by manager Nicole Graboff and lawyers Ryan Pastorek and Adam Kaller.
All major Hollywood agencies, including WME, CAA, UTA and Paradigm, have rosters that include YouTubers and other digital ‘influencers’, and the trend has in the past few years crossed the Atlantic, thanks to the success of events including Summer in the City and the Meet and Greet Convention.
“The market is definitely getting bigger, and there’s no reason at all why this can’t be an arena-level headline business in the next three to five years,” WME London agent Alex Bewley told IQ in 2017. “Rather than just clicking a ‘like’ button on Facebook or subscribing to a YouTube channel, fans are increasingly buying tickets to see a show by their favourite creators.”
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.