Greg Miall has spent his career building media businesses through every major shift in how people watch, share, and connect. After leading global partnerships at Yahoo and overseeing digital ventures for Europe’s Antenna Group, he came to a realization that would set the foundation for his next chapter: traditional advertising still built brands better than digital campaigns, but television had lost its youngest audience.

“If you run ads on YouTube, that’s great, but it doesn’t build a brand,” Greg says. “When we ran ads on TV alongside digital, our click-through rate tripled and conversion rate quadrupled. We had a 12x increase in effectiveness for a new brand just by telling the story on TV.”

That insight (and the gap it revealed) became the spark for Gaggl, the London-based startup he co-founded in early 2024. The company is building what Greg calls “creator-hosted TV,” a hybrid between television’s storytelling power and the participatory energy of platforms like Twitch. 

“We produce TV for Gen Z,” he explains. “Viewers can play along, creators can host on their own channels, and it becomes a shared, collective experience.”

Gaggl’s format allows creators to stream licensed shows, such as “The Price Is Right” or “Family Feud” directly to their audiences, complete with interactive overlays that let viewers guess outcomes, debate storylines, or compete in real time. Behind that innovation lies a simple but radical idea: that television, once a one-way medium, can now become social, measurable, and creator-driven.

When the Internet Started Watching TV Together

Greg’s realization that television could be reimagined for a digital generation didn’t come from theory. It came from watching the internet behave like a living room.

The first signal arrived when Twitch streamer xQc began reacting to Gordon Ramsay’s cooking shows without permission. “It was illegal, but it was hugely popular,” Greg recalls. “Gordon Ramsay became the biggest thing on Twitch, and that told us there’s massive demand.”

Then came the Depp v. Heard trial, streamed live and reinterpreted by creators across the world. “Streamers were watching the feed, commenting on it, even gamifying it, betting on how many times Amber Heard would look at the jury,” he says. “They were essentially turning a courtroom drama into a shared social experience.”

Those moments, he explains, proved that a participatory model for television was already emerging organically from creator culture. “It’s the evolution of getting together with your friends to watch your favorite show,” he says. “Now, it’s hanging out online with your community and chatting about Gordon Ramsay or ‘Deadliest Catch.’”

For Greg, it was clear: if creators could legally host TV content, audiences would follow, and brands would finally have a way to participate in those moments at scale.

Building the Platform: Crawl, Walk, Run

Gaggl’s founders – Greg, Adam Harris, and James Duffield – took a “crawl, walk, run” approach. Their first test partnered with Fremantle, one of the world’s largest producers of game shows. The pilot streamed “The Price Is Right” through five creators who could pause the show, invite their viewers to guess prices, and comment in real time.

“It was completely bootstrapped. No one got paid,” Greg says. “But it worked. People watched, creators had fun, and it was compelling enough that we could show clips to other partners and say, ‘Look at this.’”

Equally crucial was the decision to build on Twitch rather than launching a standalone app. “Everyone in media wants to build their own platform,” Greg notes. “But the audience is already on Twitch. The creators already have communities there. You go where they are instead of trying to change behavior.”

That principle underpins Gaggl’s long-term vision: enabling creator-hosted experiences wherever audiences already congregate, from Twitch today to other live and social platforms tomorrow.

A Three-Sided Marketplace

At its core, Gaggl connects content owners (who license shows for creator-led broadcasts), creators (who use Gaggl’s interactive overlay to engage viewers), and brands (who integrate campaigns directly into the experience).

Half of Gaggl’s current catalog consists of game shows – titles like “Family Feud” and “Supermarket Sweep” – and the rest are what Greg calls “high-energy TV,” programs such as “Deadliest Catch” and vintage dating formats like “Baggage.” 

“They’re painted in bright colors,” he says. “Perfect for creators to react to.”

Creators can pause, debate, or poll their audience mid-episode. “There’s a human instinct to shout at the TV,” Greg jokes. “We just make it possible digitally.”

For creators, the value is both financial and creative, according to Greg. Broadcasting TV content gives them a break from constant on-camera performance while maintaining high engagement. “If you’re live eight hours a day, burnout is real,” he says. “With Gaggl, Friday night can be your chill night: watch TV with your community, have fun, and still monetize.”

Reward Mode and the Brand Connection

For Greg, advertising completes the equation. Brands fund the licensing and pay participating creators through Gaggl’s Reward Mode, a campaign-based monetization layer that integrates sponsor challenges and giveaways into shows.

A collaboration with Cash App and “Supermarket Sweep” tested this format. “We split the budget in half; half for big creators like Extra Emily, Alex Botez, and Olivia Monroe, and half for mid-tier creators,” Greg says. “Everyone had a great time. The tech worked, the viewers loved it.”

The results? According to Greg, Cash App saw a 40% lift in upper-funnel awareness in people who viewed the campaign, while viewer participation reached 35% of the audience, about seven times the engagement typical of standard live streams.

For Greg, those numbers validate interactive advertising as the next phase of brand storytelling. “Think of a McDonald’s breakfast campaign,” he says. “Instead of billboards, imagine ‘Family Feud’ on Gaggl: ‘What’s the number-one item on the McDonald’s breakfast menu?’ Viewers play, they laugh, and next time they pass McDonald’s, they remember the Egg McMuffin. You learn by doing.”

Betting on the Mid-Tier Creator

While major Twitch personalities help drive visibility, Gaggl is deliberately focusing its expansion on mid-tier creators with smaller but highly engaged communities. “They have a very strong connection to their audience,” Greg explains. “If you do a lot of them, you get the same reach, but much higher engagement.”

To maintain quality and brand safety, every creator goes through a vetting process. They must be Twitch Partners or Affiliates, complete several Gaggl streams before paid campaigns, and comply with content guidelines. “Our creator managers have watched everyone,” he says. “We’ve done over 6,000 broadcasts and never had an issue.”

Greg emphasizes that this reliability has helped Gaggl earn the trust of major studios and advertisers who remain cautious about the livestreaming world.

Defining TV 3.0

Internally, the Gaggl team refers to its mission as TV 3.0: a third phase in how audiences experience television.

As Greg explains, TV 1.0 was linear broadcasting, what he calls “your mum with small TVs all over the house.” TV 2.0 was video-on-demand, led by Netflix and Disney+, emphasizing long-form series watched alone. TV 3.0, he says, “is watching TV with creators.”

“The channel used to be CBS, then it became Netflix. Now the channel is Extra Emily,” Greg says. “There are millions of channels on Twitch, each with its own hosts and schedules. That’s the new ecosystem.”

The Road Ahead

Eighteen months after launch, Gaggl remains focused on Twitch, but plans to expand across new platforms and content verticals. “The short-term goal is to keep building what we have with agencies and brands,” Greg reveals. “The long-term vision is to bring creator-hosted viewing to major franchises.”

He cites a recent “Lord of the Rings” marathon streamed on YouTube as a glimpse of what could come next. “There were 1,500 people watching, but no interactivity, no host,” he says. “Imagine a brand-sponsored ‘Lord of the Rings’ watch-along on Twitch, where creators host in their own style – someone dresses as an orc, someone’s a lore expert, someone’s new to it. That’s fun. That’s the future.”

For Greg, the shift is less about technology than behavior. “My kids are teenagers,” he says. “For them, this is TV. What would be strange is if it didn’t exist.”

As the boundaries between screens blur, Gaggl’s bet is that the next generation won’t distinguish between creator and broadcaster at all. They’ll simply tune into whoever makes watching more social. “You go to where they are,” he says. “You don’t try to change people’s behavior. You deliver a product that fits it.”