Has anyone ever heard of a Gran Turismo player who has real sponsorship contract?
And, what are your thoughts on this or those people?
I am honestly looking for a way to help support myself with the game given I can not work for health reasons.
Think big and follow your dreams. I streamed every 2 days for 1.5 years to hit 1K subs on YouTube. When you hit that number, you can apply for channel monetisation. You already know of the requirements needed.
I would like to preface one important point, YouTube doesn't pay much in advertising revenue at all. Roughly say, $1.20 per 1K views per stream. Videos as I recall can be slightly higher.
It's also worth noting that it's a lot of hard work, and most individual streamers, myself included, didn't get into streaming for the money. Although there are channels out there that are big enough to earn an ok ish wage on.
I'm at just over 1.5K subs, I stream part time in-between real life commitments, (work, family life etc), and I find it's a fun hobby on the side. I like to entertain, race hard and bring good content to anyone who wishes to watch.
I can tell you that the amount of work needed to make a good living from doing this is immensely difficult. You can count Gran Turismos biggest individual streamers on the palm of one hand. Did they work hard to get there? Absolutely. Do they make as much money as everyone thinks? Not really.
At around maybe 10K subs you could become attractive to a sponsor or 2. I approached one sponsor a while ago and got turned down, but that's as far as I have explored the possibility.
Even streaming YouTube, or making videos takes up a lot of time and energy. Are you prepared to stream when ill with the flu? Keep regular content going? Make sure it's the highest quality you can make? Upgrade your equipment yourself, (PS5, streaming PC, race seat, wheel etc)? These can get quite expensive and fast. I know, I went that route.
Overall, I say if you want it, go for it. But know what it involves and the sheer brute effort you'll need to make a living from it. Just pressing a go live button is easy. There's stream advertisement, community to build on top of it all. It's very difficult. Take it from me.