EAST LANSING – On Monday and Wednesday mornings, Michigan State junior Matt Meagher leaves his Psi Upsilon fraternity house and heads to his second residence at Campus Village apartments.

He doesn't sleep there. The bedroom is set up with a digital camera, webcam, three computer screens, an Xbox One, computer tower, audio equipment and professional-grade lighting.

All of which he needs for his job, which is making videos of himself playing “Madden 19,” the latest installment of the extremely popular football video game.

Meagher is a slender 5-foot-10 with wavy blonde hair, and on a recent January afternoon, he was wearing a Michigan State hoodie, looking every bit the college student.

But online, he's "MMG," one of the most recognizable YouTube stars in the realm of sports video games.

And a millionaire at the age of 20, if you believe online estimates.

Meagher says the websites that list his net worth over $1 million aren’t accurate, but for the past three years, posting his Madden videos to YouTube has brought in "a six-digit salary every year, I can say that.”

“This is absolutely more lucrative than anything I will do out of college for the next 10 years,” Meagher said.

Youtube personality

All from making videos of himself playing a video game. There’s a huge market out there for videos of any niche, which includes watching gamers on the live stream site Twitch.

Monetizing that is harder, but Meagher, a marketing major, has found a way.

It's not that he's the best of the best.

“Honestly, I’m not that good at the game," Meagher said. "I would beat anyone who isn’t crazy good. But, if there’s anyone out there who plays competitively, they’re going to beat me, for sure."

It's more that he's the most amusing, with a booming enthusiasm and voice to sell even the smallest moments, not unlike a play-by-play announcer or a WWE wrestler delivering a promo.

"I do crazy stuff and scream and get excited," he said.

He gives commentary on his good and bad plays, predicts what receivers are going to be open on the snap after reading the defense, uses Alexa to pick plays and players. And then there's something called the "Wheel of MUT," a contraption he created. He will add players to his team based on its spins.

He's brought in family members, including his mother, Heidi, and younger brother, Connor, a senior at DeWitt High School.

“Whenever someone sees one of my brother’s videos, I’ll get jokes about it and stuff, but constantly my friends will reference them,” Connor said.

Meagher also has entertained his followers with videos like the "Jalapeno Challenge," in which he eats a spicy pepper and doesn't allow himself to drink anything until he scores a touchdown. He did that for the first time in November 2015 when he reached 50,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel and has repeated it intermittently since.

Meagher's YouTube channel now has more than 1 million subscribers, a designation he reached on Feb. 13. His videos average more than 260,000 views apiece.

“So long as the NFL exists, my channel kind of exists. I love having that niche."

Making the money

Meagher's first foray into the YouTube world came his junior year at DeWitt, playing the cell phone version of the game, "Madden Mobile."

Meagher's initial videos showed viewers how to accumulate surplus coins to buy packs and players for "Madden Ultimate Team," the most popular mode on the Madden game. One day someone on the internet offered him an iTunes gift card in exchange for 200,000 coins.

Meagher did it.

“Well, after that, I was like, ‘Wait a second. This is, like, genius. Like I could never use all these coins. And I play so much, anyway," he said.

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He began putting videos on both his YouTube and Instagram accounts offering players the opportunity to buy coins from him.

In October 2015, during his senior year, Meagher was approached by YouTube to monetize his channel. Meagher was producing both coin and gameplay videos until his sophomore year at MSU, when he made the full transition to Madden gameplay only.

The video quality exponentially improved, as did the video views.

“Eventually, the money I was making off YouTube surpassed the amount I was making selling coins. There’s absolutely no purpose for me spending time to make coins and supplements if I can just make YouTube videos and make my mark," Meagher said.

Meagher produces about six videos per week. Most last 10 to 15 minutes. Then he posts them and watches the views and comments climb.

When you're an official YouTuber like Meagher, you are paid by YouTube monthly based on a number of factors.

The first is through the ads. YouTubers usually get between $1 and $5 for every 1,000 impressions an ad makes. Assuming that's what Meagher earns, if two ads play in each of his videos — at an average of 260,000 views — Meagher makes between $260 and $1,300 per video.

YouTube also takes a cut (45 percent, according to one Medium.com article) and skipped ads hurt the bottom line. Whether or not viewers click on the ads is also part of the final valuation.

“It encourages you to make a video that’s engaging and you watch the whole time,” Meagher said. “If you get someone to click on the video and watch the entire thing, that’s where you make your money. That’s the really, really important part.”

Sponsors also help. Meagher said his two full-time sponsorships are Dollar Shave Club and SeatGeek, which has sent him to NBA and NFL games. His most recent sponsor is Squarespace, a website building company.

Meagher is not the first Lansing area native or Michigan State student to find fame on YouTube. Tyler Oakley, a 2011 graduate and Okemos native, was one of the first YouTube stars out there.

But these days, Meagher’s videos almost quadruple Oakley’s in views.

It didn't hurt that Meagher did a few videos outing scammers of the extremely popular game “Fortnite” this past summer and drew a shoutout from Ninja, the best-known video game player in the world. He immediately saw a huge spike in views.

Dewitt raised

Meagher was no slouch on the real-life gridiron, either.

A kicker for the DeWitt football team, Meagher was a two-time LSJ Dream Team selection and honorable mention all-state his senior year in 2015.

Meagher’s name is all over the Panther record book and he holds three school records: Kickoff average in a season (58.1), extra-point percentage in a season (98.2, 56 of 57) and most field goals in a game (2).

He’s also in the top-10 career-wise in four categories: Kickoffs (third), kickoff yards (second), kickoff average (first), touchbacks (third).

“He was a tremendous kicker for us,” said DeWitt football coach Rob Zimmerman. “He’s an extremely personable young man and always got along really well with everybody. He was really well-liked, and I think that one of his greatest attributes is that he can talk to anyone.”

Since Meagher started his Madden journey back in high school, there was plenty of talk around the school, too, about what he was doing online.

“The kids in the school were just enamored with the fact that he was doing so well financially with it and how intelligent he was with the whole scheme of things,” Zimmerman said.

'Tricks' for making a successful video

On recording days, Meagher brings multiple outfits so it doesn’t look like the videos were recorded on the same day. Meagher estimates that each 10- to 15-minute video takes about 90 minutes to record. He aims to do that four times each on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Meagher simultaneously records his gameplay and his commentary, the former with his iMac Pro and the latter using a Lumix GH4 DSLR camera.

One of Meagher’s “tricks” is that he’s always listening to music — all kinds, he says — in his headphones at a high volume. That way he can’t hear how loud he is when he’s reacting to what’s happening on the screen.

“I like to obviously bring a lot of energy and do a lot of screaming and yelling,” Meagher said. “It encourages me to be louder because I don’t know how loud I’m being. But it keeps my energy high."

At this point, Meagher outsources almost all of his video work to Anthony Garcia, a 21-year-old freelance video editor who lives in Florida and goes by the YouTube name "Prince Prodigy."

Garcia weaves in popular memes and sound effects to supplement Meagher's gameplay and commentary.

"From my perspective, I think people like the fact he just says what he wants to say," Garcia said. "I feel like a lot of people have a fake persona. I think people like him being authentic."

Contact digital sports reporter Phil Friend at 517-377-1220 or pfriend@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Phil_Friend.