Live-Cam Companies Flex Muscle at 2017 AVN Show

LOS ANGELES—The model known as Erotic Eevee likes to hula hoop when she cams, so she even did it from the convention floor in Las Vegas. Wearing a florescent purple tennis skirt that matched her hot pink hair, Eevee shared her favorite hobby with her members in a sexy performance in the hallway outside Muse at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, where MyFreeCams set up one of its two large booths at the 2017 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo. “I usually always hula hoop,” Eevee told AVN. “I learned from my friends. It’s been about three years that I’ve been doing it.” Between dancing, talking and typing, Erotic Eevee entertained her cam room and the curious crowd walking the show floor with a series of gyrating twirls using her psychedelic-colored, LED hoop. Eevee not only hoops on cam, she also does it at music festivals. She’s been camming for the last year-and-a-half all with MFC. “People would tell me about it on social media. They would say, ‘hey I think you would be a good cam girl.’ I kind of had it mind already. I saw other cam girls doing their things like on Tumblr. It seemed like a natural thing to do because people are drawn to talking to me,” Eevee said. The 21-year-old admitted she was raw at the beginning. “I was so confused and so in shock the very first day. There were more than 100 people in my room. And I had no idea what to do and people were just tipping me for no reason,” Eevee recalled. Before she found camming, the LA native worked part-time in the clothing industry placing stickers onto shirts so they could be heat pressed. “But it was more of a part-time job. I was a student,” she said, noting now she cams twice a week on Wednesdays and Fridays. Last week marked her first time camming with the MFC crew in Vegas. “I’m having so much fun,” she said. Deep inside Muse Hall, the stunning brand ambassador for Flirt4Free commanded her own audience. Leggy and voluptuous, Cherry Devivre told AVN she holds a degree in economics and spent years working in the financial services industry before finding out about live cams. “I’ve been working with banks; I was working for a mutual fund company, even a law office,” said Devivre, a native of Russia who moved to Ontario, Canada, eight years ago. “I’ve tried many different things.” But when her husband told her a webcam industry exists and encouraged her to give it a try, her life changed. “I went and tried it and it was amazing. I felt like this is what I want to do right from the start,” Devivre said. “I want to perform. I want to make people happy in what makes me happy. I love it, honestly. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” Wearing a sheer black lingerie ensemble, the statuesque Devivre repeatedly stopped traffic at the Flirt4Free booth. One of the first cam stars to ever have a Fleshlight mold, the 31-year-old said she has tried other sites but just clicks better with Flirt4Free. “How they treat their girls it’s outstanding. They are there for you,” Devivre said. “Every year we have a summit, and they take us to Mexico and other places and they pay for it and we just come to chill and have a vacation. That’s the only company out there that does it. It’s amazing. For me it’s all about the relationship you know. “I keep coming back. I like how they treat their clients and I like how I can do private shows mostly. It’s our major income that comes from private shows.” It seemed like everywhere one looked at the AVN Show the live-cam business occupied prime real estate. If last year’s convention was a major coming-out party, this year will be remembered as the year the live-cam companies flexed their muscle with the largest presence of any major adult industry sector at the four-day event. “I think live entertainment is the future,” said Daron Lundeen president of CamSoda, which was situated near the entrance of Artist Hall. “The majority of AVN is cams. Cams is growing. At the end of the day this is the future of adult entertainment.” Lundeen & Co. amped up their presentation for this year’s event, coming to Vegas with a larger, more high-tech booth that featured several name porn stars lining the perimeter greeting fans and going live. “We want to always introduce new technology. So at this show we did a hologram; last year we had VR. We still have VR but a lot of people are doing that this year,” Lundeen explained. “We always want to show what’s new, what’s going to give the models a new way to make money. The better our models interact with their fans the more money they make, the more we make, the more our business grows. It’s very simple and logical and they’re our partners which is different than in the past where the models are just shooting content and you’re trying to monetize it as best you can and you only need her for one day. We need the models every day.” Lundeen said his booth was quadruple the size of his 2016 space. “Fans are coming for the models and our models wanted to sign for us so we said let’s figure out a way to make all this work,” he continued. “We’ve got amazing partners in our models. A lot of models wanted to be here supporting us.” He said CamSoda’s distinctive pink and blue logo colors were selected for a reason. “It pops. You can’t ignore it.” On the other side of Artist Hall, Toronto-based Cam4 kept the mood high-energy with its bustling booth full of cam models and staff. “This is our biggest showing,” assured Gunner Taylor, director of content for North America who is based at the company’s L.A. office. “We look around and see the competitors and see the space and we know it’s all about branding. So if you want to have that presence this is the place to be.” Half of Cam4’s black, orange and white booth was all about VR and the other half about live cams. “We decided we wanted to showcase VR. We wish we would’ve gone with a bigger space because we didn’t have enough room to do everything we wanted to do,” Taylor said. “When we got the size, we decided to split it down the middle—VR on one side and camming on the other. “We do want to showcase the VR product. We’re pretty proud of that having been the first really to the space in a big way. It’s impressive VR. A lot of people have been talking about; it’s a buzzword being thrown around but we have VR that works and we can showcase it right here at the show, which is cool. And it’s been met with a great reception.” Taylor said the girls and guys at the show were a mix. “Some are new and haven’t been with us for very long and some are tried and tested performers,” said Taylor, who manages all the talent and studios in North America as well as does the business development. “We’ve done really, really well as a cam site without a focus on North America. Developed originally as a community site about 10 years ago, Cam4 has built robust gay and fetish sections of its site, which is something that differentiates it from many others. Back in Muse Hall, Avery Black grabbed a corner spot in the jam-packed Chaturbate booth and broadcasted live from the show floor. Looking pretty in pink, the 24-year-old model said this marked her second time coming to the annual expo but her first time with Chaturbate. “It is overwhelming but in the greatest way possible,” Black told AVN. “I love it.” Now 24, the Oakland, Calif., native who lives in L.A. said she’s been camming full time for the past three years and still recalls the struggle to make money before she discovered the fastest growing area in adult. “I was working really shitty minimum wage jobs. I worked retail. I was working in an office. I was working at two different restaurants. And then slowly I was able to quit one job at a time over the span of like four months. And then I was just like yes!” Black said, noting she got into camming with a guy. “It was a little bit easier at first because we used to cam together and it’s a lot easier when you’re feeding off someone else’s energy right next to you. But then I got comfortable and I was able to cam by myself. I like it because there’s always a lot of traffic in my room and always someone willing to talk to me.” Christophe Peyras, marketing director for Streamate, told AVN his company teamed up with partners CherryPimps and Bang for its booth in Vegas this year. “It’s a big test for us because we’ve never really done this,” Peyras said as her surveyed the traffic through The Joint, where he and the crew were positioned near the stage. “I know more and more cam companies do it. We try to do things a little different than everybody else. That’s why we’re also partnered with two of our biggest partners which are Bang and CherryPimps. Because they bring all those sexy ladies. We brought some cam girls as well. So far it’s a great experience. It’s also a learning experience for us because it’s our first time doing that. “We’re at the point where we don’t really feel like we have to be too much in your face. I know it’s a strategy for a lot of other cam companies but we don’t feel the need to do that. Most of the people in the industry by now know who we are.” CherryPimps girls Natalia Starr, Natasha Starr, Alyssa Lynn, Britney Amber and Morgan Lee all took turns signing and posing for photos at the Streamate/CherryPimps/Bang space. ImLive, meanwhile, extended its presence at the 34th annual AVN Awards Show Saturday night, continuing what has become a tradition at the ceremony. The live cam juggernaut bestowed special gifts upon the two recipients of top performer awards—Female Performer of the Year Adriana Chechik and Male Performer of the Year Mick Blue. Colombia is widely regarded as a hotbed for cam girls, so it was no surprise to see the gorgeous Danna Smith turning heads at the Cams.com booth. The 24-year-old from Medellin, Colombia, said she had been camming for five months. “I like so much, make a lot of friends,” Smith said. “I love my work.” Smith worked as a “graphic communicator” before she started modeling, calling her profession a mix between “graphic design and social communicating.” “Now I do this all the time. This is my first time in Vegas. It’s very big and I love it,” said Smith, who cams eight hours every day from 11 a.m. to around 7 p.m. “When I’m not working I have a little company that makes clothes so I work with that in my free time,” she added. She creates items such as shirts, pants and jackets. “I make it for their pleasure. I don’t sell them, I just make for the other person,” she said. On the other side of The Joint, Anna Mejia took questions at the FreeWebcams booth, telling AVN she runs the company’s Colombia office. “We have a lot of tools for the models and for the users to have fun. They have multiple options. They have free chats, private chats. Everything that the user could want,” Mejia said. “We are all over the world. We have Colombian girls, Romanian girls, American girls, a lot of them.” Mejia said FreeWebcams in the past year “developed new tools.” “We have more support now, 24-7 people answering questions,” she said, noting she’s been with the company a year and a half. “I support the models, the users, the studios, the agents. “It’s really easy to use. Users like it because you find a lot of different models and the models like it because it’s private. And they have a lot of support.” Back at MyFreeCams’ booth, stunning Reya Sunshine flirted with members in her room in between smiling for pictures with passers-by. A native of the Bay Area who has a degree in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz, Sunshine started camming just 20 days before AEE 2016. Now she’s a vet. “I cam almost every single day. I love it. It just gets better and better,” Sunshine, who is also an exotic dancer, told AVN. Sunshine said her fanbase has grown considerably in the past year, so it made sense for her to add a premium Snapchat to her list of offerings, not to mention she loves snapping. She brought her ReyasRoom t-shirts with her Snapchat on the back to the show floor. “And I’m taking myself on tour right now so I’m going to be feature dancing at lots of clubs throughout the U.S. in many different cities. I’ll also be camming from there and making my own content to sell,” Sunshine revealed. “I’m doing to one to three months in each location. Right now I’m in L.A. for a few months. Everywhere else is a surprise. I’ll be a bunch of clubs. They’ll have to tune in to see.” Pictured: Reya Sunshine, Cherry Devivre and Erotic Eevee.