LAS VEGAS—One of the signatures of the 2016 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo without question is the amped-up presence of live cam exhibitors.
Cam girls and the companies that host them set up sizable booths in numerous parts of the Expo, giving fans and trade attendees a taste of the remarkable impact webcamming is making on the business of adult entertainment.
“It’s more noticeable than ever,” said Jamie Rodriguez, director of product for Flirt4Free, which doubled the size of its booth for this year’s show.
In addition to Flirt4Free, MyFreeCams, Chaturbate, ImLive, LiveJasmin, Cams.com, FreeWebCams.com and CamSoda were among the companies spotted meeting and greeting clients and fans.
“This space used to be mostly movie studios and now there is a whole cam section of the Hall,” Shirley Lara, the chief operating officer for Chaturbate, told AVN as she surveyed Muse Hall at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
Chaturbate, a heavyweight in the live cam sector since 2011 that is the presenting sponsor of Saturday night’s AVN Awards Show, left nothing to chance with its industrial-themed booth design that included a stylish backdrop with Chaturbate’s yellow, blue and orange logo with a bra hanging from it.
Lara said no less than 16 models, or “broadcasters” as she likes to call them, were camming live from the show at any given time. She said the broadcasters pay their own way to Vegas and her company provides them with a nice dinner and WiFi at the Expo.
Some of the most popular Chaturbate broadcasters attract more than a million viewers every month, according to Lara.
“They’re becoming cam superstars,” she said.
Flirt4Free’s Rodriguez said her company this week was spotlighting their exclusive Fleshlight Camgirls; KinkLive, the premium fetish webcam community; and the soon-to-be-launched Flirt4Free InstantPay program.
As part of their partnership to create personalized masturbators based on popular cam performers, Flirt4Free brought its newest Fleshlight CamStars Cherry Devivre, Lindsey Banks, Hope Daylee, Autumn Woods, Natalie Star, Rob Ryder and Izzi to the Expo.
“Cam stars are so powerful in the market now so it makes sense,” Rodriguez said.
The first round of cam stars molded included 2014 “Flirt of the Year Fleshlight Viewer’s Choice” winners Devivre and Jake Orion. The new molds are expected to be available to fans in the first quarter of this year. Each of the stars have their Fleshlights available for purchase on a special page within their chatrooms, Rodriguez noted.
It’s impossible to miss the MyFreeCams contingent during a lap around the Expo, where attendees were seeing green in the form of the company’s prominent logo on backdrops covering the entire hallway outside Muse; MyFreeCams erected an additional booth inside the Hall.
The presenting sponsor of AEE offers its users live webcam performances and private chat capabilities with models such as Reya Sunshine, a newbie who started camming just 20 days before AEE.
“I love the MyFreeCams format with the open public chat,” Sunshine told AVN. “It’s a format that allows the model to be able to do what she wants and entertain. And I love being an entertainer.”
Sunshine, a native of the Bay Area who has a degree in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz, said she’s been an exotic dancer in Vegas and San Jose since 2013. The sexy brunette said she’s been considering doing cam work for a long time and finally took the plunge.
On the other side of Muse the Cams.com booth kept fans coming back with notorious cam girl Kendra Sunderland, aka “The Library Girl,” prancing around in a red and black corset; Alena Croft, aka AZBlonde; fetish performer Rapture; and porn star Nikki Delano turning heads in a pink bodysuit.
Delano twerked to the classic anthem “Teach Me How to Dougie” during one eye-popping moment.
Courtney Rudolph, social media manager for Friendfinder Networks, which launched Cams.com in 1996, told AVN live cams quite simply are “taking over.”
“It’s one of the only platforms left in adult where you can get that level of personal attention,” Rudolph said. “It’s one of the last revenue-generating options.”
She said on Monday Cams.com unveiled a new service called Connexion that offers an intimate way to spend time with models through high-tech interactivity. Connexion launched with a collaboration with the Lovense interactive sex toy, which allows fans to pleasure the girl and themselves.
There is a six-step startup guide on the site.
“Any closer and you’d need protection,” reads the Connexion tagline.
Rudolph said the response has been strong as Lovense indicated their sales “shot through the roof” on Monday.
“We got a really good response,” she said, noting this week's booth marked the first for Cams.com in seven years.
Drew Rosenfeld, creative director for Live Jasmin, presided over a sleek, contemporary Jasmin booth bathed in tasteful red and white hues with a theater-style video screen playing provocative trailers.
“For us it’s just about branding in the U.S.,” Rosenfeld told AVN as a parade of Jasmin models posed for photos behind him in revealing Jasmin tops. “We pretty much have the rest of the world. We’re very focused on making sure the brand is prominent in the U.S.
"We’re incorporating U.S. models into the cam shows and we’re also taking Jasmin into the mainstream. We’re producing apparel and more.”
Rosenfeld said the Jasmin booth is keeping things classy this week.
“That’s why you don’t see our girls throwing up their tops or spreading their legs. We’re not porn,” he said.
“Who is Jasmin? Jasmin is every girl. Anyone can do this. If you’re a housewife in Laguna with three extra hours at nighttime, you can do this.”
Rosenfeld suggested live cam chatrooms are replacing strip clubs in terms of interactive experiences.
“Guys are building a relationship with a model they like on cam and they can feel like they're home with the model right in their living room,” he said.
Meanwhile, adult stars Vanessa Veracruz, Bree Daniels and Scarlet Red attracted plenty of attention at the FreeWebCams booth inside The Joint. The L.A.-based company brought a larger contingent to Vegas this year and it showed.
"This is our strongest presence yet and the best turnout so far," said FreeWebCams' Tim Siner. "The girls have been giving out $10 gift cards and we're going through about 500 of them per hour."
Siner, a former executive with Vivid and Flirt4Free, said the company has quadrupled in size since he arrived a couple years ago when FreeWebCams was just warming up. Now there are more than 6500 models using the platform worldwide.
"That's actually double what it was last year," FreeWebCams' Jose Sanchez said, noting that branding and promotion like they're doing in Vegas this week has contributed to the growth. "The company has built trust with the public."
Interestingly, about 85 percent of FreeWebCams' models cam from Romania, while another 5 percent are from Colombia, "the second best place for cams," Siner noted. The rest get online from the U.S. and other countries.
ImLive meanwhile is poised to extend its presence at the AVN Awards Show Saturday night, continuing what has become a tradition at the ceremony. The live cam juggernaut will bestow special gifts upon three recipients of top performer awards at the 33rd annual show.
The luxury gifts will go to the winners of Female Performer of the Year, Male Performer of the Year and Transsexual Performer of the Year.
Busty adult performer Gianna Michaels brought star power to the CamSoda booth in the Artist Hall, where the rising company was giving out promotional cards for fans to get 200 free tokens on the platform.
CamSoda, which was featured on Fortune.com in December, places special focus on the mobile adult live-streaming business and receives the majority of its revenues from smartphone and tablet devices.
Pictured: Reya Sunshine
