Gaules

Alexandre Borba Chiqueta (São Paulo, December 2, 1983), known as Gaules, is a Brazilian Counter-Strike streamer, YouTuber, philanthropist, and former professional player.

Overview He started his professional career at g3nerationX (g3x) in 2001 when the team went to the World Cyber Games final. In 2007, the team migrated to Made in Brazil, initially with Gaules as the leader, and later as team manager. That year they won DreamHack Winter 2007, an achievement that "helped shape the role of the coach in esports in Brazil".

Tired of Gaules' insistence in asking to join the team, Monkey Tatuapé decided to put him as the leader of a junior team. Although this left Gaules discouraged, he realized that there were two ways to face the situation: "either as a bad thing or as an opportunity to join the main team. I set up the team with other very young players and we started training against them." In 2001, he had the opportunity to travel with the main team to Rio de Janeiro and compete in the first selection of the Cyberathlete Professional League in Brazil. One of the players on the team was playing badly, and Gaules, who was called to replace him, recalls: "I didn't even change equipment or anything, I just sat at the computer and we turned the match around. Then I never left the team again." In 2006, the team's partnership with Intel ended, which made their situation difficult.

"I realized that [Twitch] was an environment that most wanted status, fame, and money. And I was there just because I didn't want to starve anymore, I didn't want to depend on anyone, and I wanted to make people feel better. For me, it was a great therapy." On March 30, 2020, he announced a partnership with Omelete Company. On May 4, he participated in Twitch Rivals, a tournament to celebrate the arrival of Valorant beta in Brazil. In June, Gaules started a project to promote black streamers from Wakanda Streamers. On July 17, he participated in the video "Enquadro do Peçanha – CSGO", from Porta dos Fundos, along with FalleN, arT and boltz. The following month, ESL and DreamHack announced a partnership with Rede Globo and Gaules. Both will have the rights to broadcast ESL Pro Tour tournaments until 2023. Globo also announced a partnership with Gaules and Omelete Co., and a championship worth one spot for ESL One: Rio 2020 was launched, the "Tribe to Major". The tournament had qualifiers open to 512 teams, which could register on September 1, and the matches were played between the 11th and 13th.

On February 24, 2021, Gaules tested positive for COVID-19, taking a break from streaming, returning on March 4. On May 31, it was announced that Gaules would be the first in the world to broadcast officially the National Basketball Association (NBA) games on Twitch, starting on June 2. One of these games ended up being broadcast outside the Brazilian region, a likely reason that led to a temporary ban on his account on November 5. On November 12, it was announced that Gaules would be the first Brazilian streamer to broadcast a Formula 1 race. On December 5, 2021, he announced the launch of the podcast "Fenômenos" ("Phenomenons") in partnership with Ronaldo, a ten-episode show that hosts guests such as Neymar and Tiago Leifert. The episodes of the first season were recorded in person and remotely, and were launched in 2022.

On January 21, 2022, Gaules partnered with the Carioca Championship to broadcast 16 matches of the state championship on Twitch. The first match on the platform was on January 26, between Flamengo and Portuguesa and reached the 36,000 viewer mark. During the final between Flamengo and Fluminense, which made Fluminense the 2022 carioca champion, Gaules peaked at 24,000 viewers. On February 8, 2022, Gaules announced a partnership with Vicar to show the full 2022 season of the Stock Car Pro Series, as well as the access category Stock Series and the biggest new feature in Brazilian motorsports of the year, the FIA-accredited Formula 4 Brazil. The broadcast team, however, would not count with Gaules. The streamers Liminha, Velho Vamp, Apoka, and Mch were present in some of the rounds and commanded the livestreams. The first stream took place on Sunday (02/13), with the famous Stock Car Pro Series Double Race, at Interlagos.

On March 16, 2022, Gaules signed a sponsorship and joined Red Bull's team of athletes and players, expanding a relationship with the brand that began in 2014, when together they created a LoL tournament that would become Red Bull Solo Q. Gaules joined a team of 26 athletes and 2 players from Brazil, with names like Pedro Scooby, Letícia Bufoni, Ítalo Ferreira, Lucas Fink, Sandro Dias, Lucas Chumbo, Cacá Bueno and the FURIA. On March 30, 2022, Gaules was announced as head of gaming at KaBuM!, with the main goal of getting closer to the gamer community. On April 11, 2022, Gaules became an Eno brand ambassador, in partnership with the "No Heartburn Will Stop the Tribe" campaign, a project that aims to promote health care and counteract the social heartburn caused by prejudice and discrimination within the gamer community.

Recognition ESPN has stated that Gaules was "the biggest Brazilian Twitch phenomenon in 2018", Similarly, TechTudo said in 2018 that Gaules was "the biggest name in CS:GO on Twitch [...] is an indispensable streamer when talking about CS:GO." In another publication on the same site, it was stated that in 2020, Gaules was a Brazilian highlight for esports with his success on Twitch, noting that he streamed tournaments of CS:GO and assorted games such as Among Us and FIFA 21. Globo Esporte put Gaules on its list of the "ten Brazilian streamers who stood out in 2020," saying that he "was the phenomenon of the year, and that is undeniable." TechTudo said that Gaules was one of the streamers who echoed the practice of rerun on Twitch.

On July 2, 2020, Brazilian driver Enzo Fittipaldi, grandson of two-time Formula 1 world champion Emerson Fittipaldi, stamped the streamer's branding on his HWA Racelab Formula 3 car.

One of the positions on the CS:GO map "Train" is popularly called "Gaules" in honor of the streamer. He was the face of the PogChamp emote on Twitch for one day on January 25, 2021.

On December 9, 2021, Gaules announced his contract renewal with Twitch. To celebrate the extension of the agreement, an advertisement was aired on one of the big screens in Times Square in New York City.

Popularity On March 1, 2019, Gaules reached 100,000 spectators for the first time. He was the 88th highest-earning streamer of the year, with US$91,000. That same year, he was the only Brazilian in Twitch's top 10 most-watched streamers, ranking seventh. In 2020, Gaules broke several simultaneous viewer records in Brazil: On March 30, he broke the record with 156,000 viewers in a broadcast of the 11th season of the ESL Pro League. The record was surpassed by MIBR TV with 166,000 on April 20 in a broadcast of the same tournament, but Gaules surpassed it again with 182,000 on May 3, streaming the ESL One Road to Rio. On June 1, streaming the BLAST Premier League, he became the first Brazilian streamer to reach over 200,000 simultaneous viewers (206,000). The record was broken by Riot Games five days later, in a stream of the Brazilian League of Legends Championship (CBLOL), which was broken four hours later by Gaules, in a stream of the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown with 266,000 simultaneous viewers. On the 21st, Gaules broke his record by doing a broadcast of BLAST Premier Spring Finals with 393,000 viewers, a record that stood until February 11, 2021, when Loud's Gabriel "bak" did 511,000 viewers on a broadcast of Garena Free Fire.

In June 2020, Gaules reached 1 million followers on Twitch, In May, June, and November 2020, he was the world's most-watched streamer on the platform. He was the second most-watched streamer of 2020, behind only Canadian Félix "xQc".

On July 31, 2021, Gaules reached 50,000 subscribers on Twitch, becoming the most subscribed channel on the platform in Brazil and, globally, the fifth. In October 2021, he was again the world's most-watched streamer on the platform, with 18.1 million hours watched. Gaules was the second most-watched streamer in the world that year, again behind only xQc.

Philanthropy Clutch, the Brazilian CS: GO league championship, announced in March 2020 the Hold this Position Cup, a special charity cup whose donations were used to help fight COVID-19. The cup was attended by Gaules. The amount raised, R$60,000 (US$11,000 approximately), was donated to the Central Única das Favelas (CUFA). Additionally, Gaules donated R$156,000 (around US$30,000) on his own, a tribute to a record live stream the week before the donation, when more than 156,000 simultaneous viewers watched his stream. The following month, he participated in a Greenpeace project, drawing attention to the International Day for Biodiversity and deforestation of the Amazon. On September 22, he donated one thousand reais (approximately two hundred dollars) to the Instituto Socioambiental da Bacia do Alto Paraguai SOS Pantanal, a non-governmental, nonprofit organization based in Campo Grande to promote positive impacts for the conservation and sustainable development of the biome. When posting such a fact on his Twitter account, Gaules noticed that some people were bothered by the "ostentation", which encouraged him to increase the donation amount, totaling thirty one thousand reais (around six thousand dollars).

On the morning of January 15, 2021, he raised, in two hours, through his streams, sixteen thousand reais (approximately three thousand dollars) for the Mais Amor Manaus project, which aimed to help the situation of overloaded hospitals in the city due to the high number of cases of COVID-19. He doubled the donation afterwards. On December 11, 2021, Gaules donated 25 thousand reais (almost 5 thousand dollars), on behalf of the Tribe, to help the cities in Bahia that were affected by the overflowing of two rivers, after storms that occurred in the south of the state. On the 24th, he donated 115 thousand reais (22,500 dollars approximately) to a bedridden elderly woman.

Awards and nominations