Kristina Dinerman-Cooper – Twitch

Charging into battle against sword-wielding orcs or racing down the Autobahn in a nitrous-boosted luxury vehicle—these are just some of the possibilities for livestreaming available to content creators on Twitch, a service primarily used by video gamers wanting to promote their skills and get paid.

While not all Twitch subscribers are content creators, they all seem to enjoy livestreaming. Each year, they tune in to over 21 million hours of content.

Kristina Dinerman-Cooper | Deputy General Counsel of Global Content, Commercial and Music | Twitch

That’s according to Kristina Cooper, Twitch’s deputy general counsel of global content, commercial and music. She says the service is also used to stream cooking shows, sports and music broadcasts, enabling creators to develop audiences and communities around their passions via live and interactive content.

Hired in September 2019, Dinerman-Cooper has a deep expertise in digital content and technology. She and her team handle everything from talent partnerships with top performing content creators to content licensing deals. They also tackle events, marketing and distribution contracts, as well as complex technology and infrastructure transactions.

“We negotiate with the celebrities of the livestreaming and gaming world, many of whom have agents and legal teams,” Dinerman-Cooper says.

Virtual worlds—real money and real risks

In fact, in early 2022, Dinerman-Cooper and her team helped Twitch sign a major talent deal with a popular internet personality with tens of millions of subscribers.

“Twitch democratizes content, so anyone can create it to build their brand and community—and then earn revenue,” she says.

While most content on Twitch is streamed live, Dinerman-Cooper and her team help facilitate in-person experiences through TwitchCon. This is a bi-annual convention that brings together Twitch content creators and viewers. After a two-year hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it returned in July 2022 to Amsterdam with 14,500 people in attendance.

It was followed by a second, sold-out event in October in San Diego, which saw over 30,000 people attend. The San Diego event hosted an all-female line-up of musical performances, including the popular female rapper and singer, Megan Thee Stallion.

“TwitchCon is the ultimate celebration for Twitch creators and their fans,” she says. “My team was extremely happy that we enabled our community to come together in person for an incredible weekend.”

For this massive convention, Dinerman-Cooper and her team worked overtime negotiating deals, from exhibitor and venue agreements to appearance agreements with top talent for meet and greets.

In addition to also reviewing marketing and product announcements, she and her team also craft production and content deals for the popular Twitch Rivals gaming tournaments at events. They make certain that any competitions and sweepstakes follow all rules and that the convention complies with the regulations for the country in which it takes place.

“We excel in ensuring that TwitchCon reflects the Twitch brand and its values,” Dinerman-Cooper says. “We simultaneously focus on enhancing the overall experience for all attendees, content creators and their communities—online and in person.”

Levelling up

In addition to the two TwitchCons in 2022, Dinerman-Cooper and her team also closed landmark deals with three major music labels: Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Merlin Network—bringing new, popular artists to Twitch.

“These deals were first-of-their-kind partnerships for Twitch and have fostered the creation of artist and label channels, as well as premium music-centric programming on the service,” she says.

Furthering expansion, she and her team also closed several distribution deals in 2021 and 2022. This gave Twitch momentum and visibility, she explains, as it now comes installed on devices, such as Samsung devices and LG SmartTVs.

It’s all in a day’s work for Dinnerman-Cooper, who’s been handling the legal end of traditional and digital content for nearly 30 years. She started her legal career as an associate with Paul Hastings, Janofsky and Walker LLP, but within three years, she’d become a director of business and legal affairs for Fox Sports International.

There, she gained valuable experience acquiring and distributing sports content on a global scale, handling agreements for the U.S.-based Fox sports channels, as well as those in Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

Before starting at Twitch in 2019, Dinerman-Cooper was the vice president of global partnerships and vice president of business and legal affairs at Yahoo! There, she oversaw business and legal affairs for all content products and verticals, the editorial team and Yahoo Studios. In fact, aiming high is something ingrained into her very nature. She graduated from cum laude with a bachelor’s in political science from Loyola Marymount University and cum laude from Loyola Law School, where she was also a Sayre McNeil Scholar as a student with grades in the top five percent.

“Twitch caught my interest because it’s at the cutting edge of livestreaming and where the future of digital content is,” Dinerman-Cooper says. “I wanted to be a part of that—and, now, I get to help Twitch bring diverse content to people across the globe.”

View this feature in the Vanguard Winter IV 2023 Edition here.