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British personality Caedrel is the biggest name in League of Legends streaming right now. With millions of followers, an EMEA Masters winning team in Los Ratones, and more views than the official Riot broadcasts, he is on top of the world. But behind many successful personalities inside and outside of esports, there are the managers and agents helping them to shine. Mitsouko Anderson is that person for Caedrel, and her other clients including Sjokz, Rekkles, Laure, Nisqy and Jimmy Broadbent.
Dom Sacco sits down with Mitsouko at the recent NLC Winter finals in Nottingham to find out what it’s really like working with such superstars, and how she set up her own agency Yume Talent a few months ago.
For every viral clip, clutch moment or esports champion lifting a trophy, there are countless people working behind the scenes to help make those magic moments happen.
The big-name players and streamers might take a lot of the limelight, but we should never forget the hard work of staff in production, marketing, management and more.
Mitsouko Anderson is someone who has been pulling the strings in esports for a decade now, having worked as head of marketing and later brand director at the NUEL (now also known as UK University Esports UK & Ireland), before working on campaigns at Code Red Esports and later being promoted to head of compaign management.
In 2021 she joined Morgan Sports Law to launch DotX Talent, starting as Head of Partnerships then being promoted to Chief Operating Officer.
In November 2024, Mitsouko took a leap of faith to set up her own agency, Yume Talent (Yume being pronounced ‘you-meh’, the Japanese word for ‘dream’). She brought across four of her clients with her: big-name League of Legends personalities Caedrel, Sjokz, Laure and sim racing driver Jimmy Broadbent.
Now, with the additional signings of Rekkles and Nisqy, and working on projects like The League Awards and Los Ratones, the sky is the limit for Mitsouko.
And while she never expected to go into talent management, she’s enjoying it, and says her current role is more like an agent/manager hybrid.
“For me, the most exciting thing is working really closely with your clients to create really interesting partnerships on the one hand, but also help create new IP, help them create businesses and brands that they can then have in the long term,” Mitsouko tells Esports News UK at Nottingham Trent University’s Confetti X facility ahead of Los Ratones’ NLC Winter Finals LAN win.
“Realistically, when you’re at the size that my creators are, it’s very difficult to sit down and be like, ‘okay, I have this big idea and this is what I want to do with it’. And to go to your agent and say, like, ‘beyond partnerships, can you also run this thing?’ I think that’s the difference between agent and manager and I kind of sit as a blend between the two, where I’m super hands-on with projects, ideas, general career growth, business growth in other areas, but also can work on the commercial side, which is also a lot of the backbone of understanding how these projects work.
“I’m just really focusing on doing the best I can for my current clients.”
So, what’s it like working as an esports agent day-to-day, with these kind of personalities?
“One week I might be in Berlin, having meetings to do with the LEC or to do with League of Legends, and the next I might be somewhere in the South of England helping a client open up a new showroom in the sim racing space,” Mitsouko states.
“A lot of it depends on what you have going on with specific clients. There is a lot of general partnership management and campaign management for any client that is already working with a long-term or short-term partner, making sure that deal is going smoothly, helping facilitate new ideas, new creatives that can help boost that partnership a bit more.
“Of course, there’s a lot of sales involved as well, I’m always reaching out, pitching, networking, building relationships with prospective partners.
“And I think that’s also what I like about it, because I also come from a campaigning/consultancy background, where my job was to think of creative ways that brands could activate in the esports and gaming space. And now I still do that, just on a much more focused level, where I know the ins and outs of Caedrel’s content, for example, and I know what will work with him and what he would enjoy, and I know what would then perform well for a brand as well.
“My focus is not on how many brands I can reach out to, it’s on finding out what my talent genuinely care about in terms of products and services that add to their life. I’d rather know their dream brands to work with and focus on trying to make that happen, rather than bringing them things they won’t care about for the sake of it.”
Mitsouko Anderson, Yume Talent
“Then, beyond that, it’s coming to events like this, being on the ground. A lot of people think it’s just sitting down and sending emails, and there is a lot of that! But there is also a lot of talking to people and being on site.”
I ask her how many emails she gets in a day, and she’s not sure of the number.
“I think you kind of have to be quite ruthless to a degree with emails,” Mitsouko says. “But also, I’m a big fan of productivity habits and all this stuff, and there’s a method with inbox called inbox zero, where you archive, delete or reply to everything.
“I love organisation, which I feel like is a critical part of what I do. You kind of have to be organised, otherwise everything is a mess.”
Going back to partnerships, and Mitsouko cites the work Laure and Sjokz did with the Marriott Bonvoy hotel loyalty programme last year.
“They got to do the kind of content that they love doing on Instagram, but carry across gaming and carry across amazing hotel experiences with Marriott in a way that was not like, ‘uh oh, scripted sponsored stuff that my audience is gonna hate, this is gonna be cringe” she explains.
“It was genuinely stuff that they loved creating, and the brand could see that, and they loved how it came across, because it was just effortless. That is my job a lot of the time – finding solutions, including in sales.”
What kind of a role does Mitsouko Anderson and Yume Talent have with Los Ratones?
While Mitsouko is Caedrel’s agent, she also helped build his League of Legends team, Los Ratones.
“Los Ratones was honestly one of the most exciting things I’ve ever helped build,” Mitsouko beams. “It started with Caedrel sharing this brilliant but chaotic vision for a team built entirely around creators. And actually, not even just being creator-led, but also having this core transparency: he wanted to be able to share everything with his stream. The reasoning behind decisions, scrims, game reviews, merch design processes, the ups-and-downs of competing in a professional league…
“From there, it became my job to help make it real – discussions to enable streaming from player POVs (now something that’s fully enabled in ERLs as of this year), securing Los Ratones’ slot in the NLC, being a creative sounding board when it came to things like brand identity, and laying the foundations to actually launch.
“Basically, my role was to help shape the project into something that could actually exist outside of our heads and make sure Caedrel could focus on building the team, its identity and also taking that step into being not only an owner but also a coach.”
Was there a standout moment for Mitsouko early on?
“The announcement was all a bit of a blur, but I think a key moment for me was landing Los Ratones at Red Bull League of Its Own to play against T1 after about one month of going public with the team.
“I’ve been lucky to have a great relationship with some of the incredible team at Red Bull, and they were incredibly supportive when Caedrel and I came to them with the slightly mad idea of getting LR into the event on such short notice.
“It was a big ask, but they fully embraced it and were genuinely excited to help make it a reality. So many people behind the scenes put in a huge amount of effort to pull off something special. Seeing fans so excited to meet the team in person, having Caedrel co-stream from on-site and coach, watching Velja and Baus on stage for the first time, and then actually winning? That was just… an unforgettable moment.”
Mitsouko has become part of the LR journey, and as such, is recognised by the fans and the community, appearing in some of the team’s vlogs, and in fan creations on social media.
What’s it been like for Mitsouko to manage the team alongside her individual clients?
“It was definitely a bit hectic at the start,” she admits. “I was in the middle of launching Yume Talent, working on some major partnerships for clients, and prepping the League Awards, all while helping to get a brand-new team off the ground. It was a whirlwind, but in a weird way, the timing was kind of perfect.
“One of the reasons I started Yume in the first place was to have the freedom to take on projects like this—ones that go beyond just commercial deals and actually help my talent build something bigger, like their own IP. Helping bring Los Ratones to life felt like a really natural extension of what I want Yume to stand for: creator-first, creatively ambitious, and not afraid to do things differently.
“That said, I’m under no illusion that running a team, managing some of the biggest names in LoL, and operating an agency is a sustainable solo effort. So toward the end of last year, we brought in Kieran (Holmes-Darby, formerly of Excel) as General Manager of Los Ratones to lead the day-to-day and work closely with Caedrel across all things Los Ratones. That allowed me to step back and focus more fully on Yume, while still being a supportive figure behind the scenes—jumping in when Caedrel or the team needs extra support, or when conversations benefit from a commercial or strategic lens, especially given I helped build the framework from the start and continue to work closely with Caedrel, who’s such a core part of how the team operates.
“Kieran brings a lot of experience from the org side of the industry, so he’s been a great asset—and honestly, I’m also very happy to no longer be the one sorting out travel and visas and all the logistics-bits that were formerly under my remit!” (laughs)
As someone who describes herself as camera shy, what’s it like working with such huge names?
“I’m definitely more of a behind the scenes person,” Mitsouko says. “I’m very, very camera shy and I like organising things and seeing them come together in a way that means the talent can shine, and I think that’s the right approach when you are working in the talent space.
“It’s of course my job industry-wise to shout about the amazing work that we do with partners. That’s, again, sales. What it isn’t my job to do is to go and say like, ‘hey, I’m the brainpower behind X, Y and Z talent’ or fish for recognition from their audiences. I just want to elevate what they’re doing.
“I do make lots of noise about the stuff that we’ve been able to do on the industry side, which I think is the main differentiator I see. My job is to share the news that I have to the business-side, so that we are able to connect with more partners and engage with more brands. But when it comes to the community and towards the audience, it’s to take a back seat.”
“I’ve looked after Caedrel’s stream a couple of times now. It’s very intimidating. It was also at the same with the League of its Own Red Bull event, the stage debut for Los Ratones, where I think there were hundreds of thousands watching, and I was like, ‘oh, I’m not a streamer, I don’t know what to do or say’. But they’re all very nice to me, which is very sweet considering they also take the mickey out of Caedrel a lot!”
Mitsouko Anderson, Yume Talent
What about the League Awards? How much was this Caedrel and Sjokz, and how much was it Yume Talent?
“It was very collaborative,” Mitsouko explains. “I think a lot of people, when they’re thinking about creator-run projects, think that it’s very unlikely that it will actually be the creators working on it. But the amount of work that Sjokz and Caedrel put into The League Awards was crazy.
“They were super involved, and I think that pushed it to a degree of stress that probably could have been avoided if things were kind of taken out of their hands or put with other people. But I think that’s also why it was so charming and so different from other award shows, because they wanted to be super involved, they wanted it to feel like this was put on by people in the industry that they could talk.
“We had IWillDominate and YamatoCannon on the show as well, and it had that kind of feeling it was created by creators for other people in the industry.
“So they were super involved, obviously we had loads of amazing people from different backgrounds, whether it was from a video perspective, a social media perspective, all working on it. But the overall creative direction and a lot of the work put in was super driven by Sjokz and Caedrel, and I was there to keep things on track and help make sure that things were being done by deadlines, working with Twitch as well to support the awards as partners and things like that.”
What learnings did they take from the inaugural League Awards for the 2025 show?
“I think the key learning was to start earlier and be more prepared!” Mitsouko says. “It’s very difficult when you’re a full-time talent to sit down and be like, ‘okay, this is this big project that I wanna do, and I’m gonna do it on this particular date and this is all the stuff I have to do’.
“Usually it’s something they’ve been thinking about for a while, but actually, like, you know, pulling the trigger and going, ‘okay, let’s do this’ is a big turning point. It was a very short turnaround last year, so I think that’s a key learning is to start earlier, and be more prepared. I think there were also different learnings to do with things like the voting process, or even small things like, ‘oh, how did how did the community respond to the format of the show?’
How esports agent Mitsouko signed Caedrel and Sjokz
“In the case of Caedrel, funnily enough, he actually came to a NUEL event that I ran way back when at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere. He was a player back then, it might have been for H2K,” Mitsouko recalls.
“Someone came over to me and they’re like, ‘did you know there’s a professional League of Legends player here?’
“And I was like, ‘really? I don’t think I had them on the guest list.’ (laughs)
“So I went over and had a chat and he was very lovely, down to earth, a quite shy guy, but we stayed in touch from time to time.
“I think UK esports is kind of small, so when he was with Excel Esports and they had events in Twickenham, I’d always see him around. So we just kept loosely in touch and then when I launched DotX with Morgan Sports Law, I reached out and was like, ‘if you’re ever looking for an agent, then you know where to reach me.’
“I think this was two and a half years ago now.
“When Caedrel said he was looking for an agent, he completely grilled me. He asked me probably the hardest questions that any talent has ever asked me in initial discussions about representation, but yeah, he ended up taking a leap because he was the biggest client that we had at the time, when he signed.”
Mitsouko Anderson, Yume Talent
“Since then, it’s just been up and up and up and obviously keeps growing, he joined at a time where he was still a caster and now he’s like the world’s biggest Twitch streamer, which is just insane. He’s a very hard worker. I was lucky to be the one to work alongside him as his agent at a time where there was lots of exciting stuff going on and this huge transition was happening in his career.”
“And when it came to Sjokz, I’ve been a massive fan for a very long time and she was (and still is) a huge inspiration for me. Now being able to work alongside her, and Laure as well, two of the women that I think a lot of people look up to in the industry, is really, really rewarding.
“I think I’ve set a – hopefully, fingers crossed – a good reputation for myself as an agent that works hard for people and that genuinely cares. And I think that’s why I’ve been able to work with such high level talent, because they know I’m gonna do everything I can to help them achieve things, make projects come to life and also do a good job when it comes to the commercial side, and protect them and their interests, but also get them cool sponsorship deals. So I think word of mouth, reputation and right place, right time [helps when signing talent].”
When it came to leaving DotX and setting up Yume Talent, Mitsouko says: “I wasn’t sure what the next chapter would look like after I resigned at DotX, but after a back and forth over my notice period we eventually came to an agreement where they were okay with four of my clients also leaving with me – all clients that I worked very closely with.
“I’d been working with them for a while and in some cases, four or five years with people like Jimmy Broadbent. It was super important to me that, regardless of my own personal situation with my career, I could make sure I could give them as smooth a transition as possible. I wanted them to know that they’re gonna get the same level of care, the same level of representation, that they know me for. I don’t want to let my clients down, I want to put them first: I love what I do and I love working with them. And now I get to work with them in a company that is my own and make my own decisions about how I do that.
“They’ve all been super supportive when I explained to them what I was doing [setting up Yume Talent], the reasons why I was doing it, and they were also very supportive in trying to make sure that my transition was also really smooth and seamless.”
The meaning of Yume
As mentioned, Yume (pronounced ‘you-meh’) is the Japanese word for ‘dream’.
So, why the name Yume?
“For me, like, I always had this feeling in my head. What am I going to call my company?” Mitsouko asks. “But a lot of the time while growing up, I was on mixed footing with my background, which is mixed Japanese and English. And I have a lot of inspiration from my mum, who moved to England at a time where there were not very many Japanese people around us. I think she is an incredibly strong woman, someone that inspires me and someone that I don’t really get to talk about that often [in esports].
“When it comes to pronunciation, I think it is kind of funny, because I used to also hate my name and be super embarrassed by it because of the unique pronunciation. I would shorten my name to make it easier for people and all this type of stuff.
“So when it came to my agency, I kind of wanted to have something that was representative of what it was that I wanted to achieve for clients. As cheesy as it may sound, I want to fulfill their dreams, and make sure that it’s not just like, ‘here’s some partnerships’. It’s much more than that. It’s really about making legacies for them. But also to have that Japanese name feels like I get to re-own that part of me, and if people can’t pronounce it, then I’ll tell them how to pronounce it, and they can learn and deal with it! (laughs)”
What’s next for Yume Talent and Los Ratones in the future?
Will Yume Talent be looking to hire more agents in the future?
“It’s one of the interesting challenges with talent agencies,” Mitsouko answers. “It’s usually the case that clients you sign want to work specifically with you. And I think that’s a learning that I’ve had over my time working in the talent management area is if you sign someone, they sign because they have heard you are good, and they want to work with you, or you’ve met them at event and you’ve done something with them and they’ve been like, ‘wow, cool, I wanna work with you’.
“They don’t wanna sign with the agency that agent is at and then be told ‘right, you’re gonna be working with this person, see ya, I’ll never speak to you again’.
“One of the reasons why I’m going to be selective with who I sign is I want to make sure I can commit to the talent I have. And growth for me will I think be bringing on someone that can start picking up work with those talents across the board, as someone that can work alongside me and build up that trust’.
“I think it’s much more collaborative, something where talent across the board can build up a level of trust with someone I work with closely, and that’s how it grows. But even then, I don’t think it will be something where I want the agency to have 50+ talent.
“Some agencies sign as many talents as possible and do as many deals as possible and that’s the way that they will make money. Whereas for me, I’d rather do cool stuff with cool people and grow at a pace that makes sense. I don’t care about volume, I care about impact.
“Some agencies sign as many talents as possible and do as many deals as possible and that’s the way that they will make money. Whereas for me, I’d rather do cool stuff with cool people and grow at a pace that makes sense. I don’t care about volume, I care about impact.”
And what’s next for Los Ratones?
“There’s no big machine behind LR—it’s been Caedrel leading it from day one, and putting in even more work off-stream than the crazy amount he already does visibly on-stream,” Mitsouko says. “He’s juggling content creation, co-streaming major leagues, coaching, and running a team, all while constantly setting new goals for himself and LR. I don’t think he ever stops working (which also means I’ve always got plenty to do), but that work ethic and level of drive is exactly what makes even the most ambitious goals feel not just exciting, but actually possible.
“In terms of what’s next, there are definitely these kinds of ambitions to push further—whether that’s figuring out a path into a tier-one league, helping Baus live up to his “winning Worlds in 2026” promise (no pressure), or something else entirely. But I think we’re all aware it needs to be taken one step at a time.
“What makes Los Ratones so special is also what makes it hard – we’re not built like most esports orgs. We’re very lean. We’re community-focused. We’re creator-first. That gives us a lot of freedom and authenticity, but it also adds a lot of complexity. There are a lot of moving parts, and every decision requires care and intention.
“My role now is just about supporting whatever direction the team wants to take next— helping to open the right doors, backing Caedrel’s vision, and keeping things aligned with what makes Los Ratones, Los Ratones. Whatever the next chapter looks like, I know it’ll be something special, and I feel very lucky to be part of it.”
Related content: Caedrel has posted a video on what’s next for Los Ratones
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
