Eldridge Invests $10 Million In Creator Management Company Fixated

Fixated, a content creator management company founded last year that represents creators including Zach Justice and twitch streamer Sketch, has secured a $10 million investment from Eldridge Industries, the company said Wednesday.

Fixated declined to give a valuation or disclose how much of a stake Eldridge holds with its investment, but the company’s co-founders Zach Katz and Jason Wilhelm said Eldridge has a “vast minority” in Fixated. Along with the $10 million from Eldridge, Fixated secured another $2.8 million from other investors as well, totaling their round at $12.8 million. Eldridge is headed by CEO Todd Boehly, whose investments include A24 and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Eldridge holds a stake in The Hollywood Reporter through a joint venture with Penske Media Corporation.

Katz, a longtime music industry veteran who served as president of esports and entertainment brand FaZe Clan from 2022 to 2023, co-founded Fixated a year and a half ago alongside Jason Wilhelm, a co-founder of the TikTok creator management company TalentX. Along with Justice, who launched his own indie production banner back in December, Fixated’s roster includes chess players/influencers Andrea and Alexandra Botez and contortionist Sofie Dossi, who gained prominence on America’s Got Talent and now has 12.4 million TikTok followers.

The duo tells THR that they launched the company because of what they see as a “massive hole” for the content creator economy, where there aren’t enough representatives helping content creators develop their businesses.

Many content creators are seeking to expand their businesses beyond any one platform — from podcasting to livestreaming video games, to short form video on TikTok. As Katz and Wilhelm said, most managers in the space focus mainly on securing brand deals but don’t offer more bespoke services for content creation.

“I came into this business from a ‘cousin industry’ with the music business, where the support system for artists has been the same. Artists have managers who are their rock, their biggest advocate and a commercial partner who helps build a road map for your success and to set and achieve goals. In digital entertainment, this didn’t really exist.”

And while a musician only needs to release their product comparably infrequently, his clients “have to wake up every single day and make a ‘hit song’ so to speak.”

As Wilhelm says: “For some of these agents, the thinking is ‘we’re going to do what we know what we know works, and that’s brand deals,’ but most of the money creators generate comes from content. We help with their content across Snap, facebook, YouTube, streaming. all these platforms are different from one another and being an expert on all of them is difficult.”

Katz also attributes the dearth of resources to the perception of content creators as mere influencers who don’t need to be taken as seriously as legacy entertainers. He says many of his clients’ goals have changed since the creator economy came into more mainstream focus in the past several years. The idea that a strong TikTok following or engaged Twitch audience is just a stepping stool for a Hollywood career has faded, he says.

“If Hollywood was the major leagues, this digital entertainment industry was the minor leagues,” Katz said. “I think that the big ambition has changed from the ultimate success looking like having a show on Netflix or Hulu to ‘how do I actually build a business that takes the gazillion eyeballs out there, and how do I become a star on all those platforms. Some of our clients still want that, Zach Justice is obsessed with film. But creators are getting focused on the environments they’ve mastered and looking at Hollywood more like ‘if it makes sense it makes sense.’”