Want more tourists in your country? Pay IShowSpeed to come visit

IShowSpeed is currently on a world tour, taking his 42 million YouTube subscribers, 38 million Instagram followers, and 1.1 million Twitch followers around the globe. He’s hitting major countries, hosting livestreams showing what it’s like to visit–and droves of his fans are tuning in. A recent stream from Turkey brought ~437K concurrent viewers on YouTube and ~48K on Twitch, making Speed the most-watched live creator on both platforms simultaneously.

Basically, he’s bringing a lot of eyes everywhere he goes. And at least some of those eyes belong to potential tourists who might want to follow in his footsteps.

So, with that in mind, countries are paying Speed to pay them a visit.

Regions like Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have paid him €30,000 each (around ~$35K USD) to make them a stop on his tour, local press LRT reports. €20,000 of that goes into Speed’s pockets, and the other €10,000 funds logistics during his visits.

The money comes from countries’ taxpayers, and is disbursed through their tourism efforts. In Lithuania, for example, Speed’s visit was arranged for and paid by official tourism promotion agencies Go Vilnius and Travel Lithuania.

These agencies say investing in visits like Speed’s is part of the constant battle for tourists’ attention.

“Every destination is fighting for the attention of the same travelers,” Kaarel Kõvatu, Tourism Marketing Project Manager at Estonia’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Foundation, said. “We always take the opportunity when Estonia is featured in the plans of an influencer with a very large following.”

The investment seems to be paying off, too. We have the aforementioned Turkey numbers, and in Estonia, Speed’s July 15 stream got nearly 2 million viewers, Kõvatu said. Whether those viewers will translate into tourism dollars (er, Euros) remains to be seen.

Either way, though, in this industry, we’re used used to entities like brands paying creators for their endorsement and audience reach. It simply comes with the territory. But entire countries banding together to invite creators? That’s new, and shows just how much influence influencers really have these days.