Lucas ‘Squeezie’ Hauchard is one of France’s largest content creators. He boasts over 18M YouTube subscribers and is the most-followed French Twitch channel with 4.95M Followers. Squeezie has established his success in live-streaming and content creation, and recently he turned his attention towards esports, founding his own esports organisation. Let’s look at his journey from YouTuber to esports co-owner and eventually becoming the most popular Valorant community caster of the VCT 2024 Kickoff events.
Squeezie’s journey to stardom and entry into esports
Lucas began his YouTube channel in 2011 at the age of 15. Squeezie established himself as a gameplay commentary YouTuber, quickly building up a sizeable following before moving on to other content. He engaged with reaction content, vlogs, and IRL content in general. Slowly and steadily, Squeezie began placing more and more of his concentration on live-streaming, and by 2018 his Twitch channel began to take off.
Squeezie’s growth continued on Twitch, and he was eventually named one of France’s Forbes 30 under 30. Throughout 2019, Squeezie participated in some Special Events on Twitch, high-budget and speciality-crafted broadcasts highlighting the peak of what is possible on Twitch. These broadcasts became some of his most popular content on the site, and in 2022 he launched his own GP Explorer event.
GP Explorer was a Formula 4 motorsport event held at the historic motorsport city of Le Mans. The event brought 22 of France’s most popular content creators and live streamers together, and Squeezie’s Special Event broadcast reached 1.04M Peak Viewers. Not only was this Squeezie’s most popular live event to date, it was one of the platform’s most-watched broadcasts ever. The 7-figure peak viewership would only be bested by the follow-up event, GP Explorer 2.
The GP Explorer 2 was expanded to 24 drivers, featured more of France’s most popular celebrities, and the event sold out 60,000 tickets to watch the event in person. Squeezie’s stream for the GP Explorer 2 reached 1.34M Peak Viewers, setting another personal record for the creator and becoming the third-most-popular Twitch stream ever.
Amid this huge popularity, Squeezie co-founded the esports organisation Gentle Mates alongside other content creators and esports influencers Gotaga and Brawks. The organisation was founded in 2023 and quickly found footholds in Valorant and Fortnite. The brand also expanded into TeamFight Tactics, a partnered team in Rocket League with French motorsport brand Alpine, and fronted a League of Legends team to compete in the French regional scene.
The sensational Gentle Mates Valorant roster and Squeezie’s sensational viewership
Gentle Mates’ Valorant roster has been their most successful venture so far. The roster predates the Gentle Mates brand, originally competing in early 2023 under the SBG (Squeezie, Brawks, Gotaga), and it found competitive success early on. The roster blazed through the French regional scene and qualified to compete at the Ascension tournament as France’s representative. The team battled through the lower bracket of the tournament, finally winning the event and securing their spot in tier-one European Valorant for both 2024 and 2025.
Throughout Gentle Mates’ competitive success, the team became wildly popular. Their Valorant roster was often earning double the viewership of their peers in the tier-2 regional French scene, similar to Karmine Corp’s time there, although at an even greater scale. After bringing such high viewership to the second tier of European Valorant, Gentle Mates was ready to compete at the top level.
Gentle Mates’ first taste of the Valorant Champions Tour would come at the VCT 2024 EMEA Kickoff, which would determine which two EMEA teams would attend the Masters Madrid international LAN event. After breezing through the Challengers scene, Gentle Mates’ entry to the VCT was not as smooth as the team would have hoped. The roster was eliminated from the tournament with a 0-2 record in the Group Stage, suffering both of their losses against their compatriot French organisation Team Vitality.
Yet, despite the team’s early exit, they recorded 292K Peak Viewers for their match against Team Vitality. The French derby was one of the tournament's most popular matches and Gentle Mates’ streak of high viewership did not end because of an early exit. In fact, despite exiting the event as early as possible, Gentle Mates was one of the EMEA Kickoff’s more popular teams. The key factor behind the roster’s high viewership early in the event was support from community casters.
For the EMEA Kickoff, Squeezie went live to watch and support his team from his own Twitch channel. For the team’s first match against Vitality, Squeezie garnered 160K Peak Viewers and registered 118K Average Viewers throughout a 3-hour broadcast. Not only did this become one of his most popular broadcasts on Twitch, it made him the most popular community caster of the regional events. He even outperformed tarik, who is well-established as Valorant’s most popular community broadcaster.
While Squeezie has hosted watch parties for Gentle Mates matches before, this one was especially popular for multiple reasons. Firstly, the game marked Gentle Mates’ first-ever appearance in the Valorant Champions Tour after ascending from the scene’s second tier. The team had built a reputation for themselves advancing through the scene, and all EMEA Valorant fans were curious to see them match up against the discipline’s top competitors.
The fact that the match was a French derby also boosted viewership. The match was the most popular game of the entire Kickoff among French-speaking viewers and received significantly higher viewership than the semi-final match between Fnatic and Karmine Corp. Karmine Corp is another French esports organisation founded by live-streamer Kamet0. Although Kamet0 contributed 110K Peak Viewers to their match against Fnatic, Gentle Mate’s match received even more attention from the official French broadcast.
The match between Gentle Mates and Team Vitality was not Squeezie’s most popular broadcast on Twitch ever, but that is an extremely ambitious target. The GP Explorer events are some of Twitch’s most popular content ever broadcasted, and the recent esports match of the EMEA Kickoff was the most popular esports broadcast ever hosted by Squeezie. Also critical for the content creator’s budget, it is a much cheaper broadcast than the other Special Events ranked in the graphic.
After their early exit from the EMEA Kickoff event, Gentle Mates are not attending the Masters Madrid international LAN. However, the VCT 2024 season still has Stage 1 and Stage 2 to offer, featuring regional leagues and an international LAN each. If the start of the season has shown anything, it is that Gentle Mates are capable of massive viewership, and Squeezie may record some of his most popular streams on Twitch ever hosting watch parties for their games.
Throughout the remainder of the VCT 2024 season, the French will likely become an even more important demographic for the EMEA circuit, thanks to both Gentle Mates and Karmine Corp. The members of these organisations who host watch parties, Squeezie, Gotaga, Kamet0, will all enjoy high viewership throughout the season, as they reap the benefits of a well-nurtured esports community.
