I won't deny it is a possibility, but it doesn't seem like something he regularly uses as part of his grift. I'm not a Twitch partner or anything so I might be misunderstanding the system, but from how it was described it sounded like an open system where anyone could claim the bounty. Some bounties would have specific requirements, like X amount of viewers, how long you had to run the bounty for and what you're allowed to say being some examples, but one of the channels I used to watch pretty regularly hosted bounties and he typically didn't get higher than 200ish views. He never said the payout, which I think is part of the program, but he said it was enough to cover his bills. Some bounties are incredibly short too, like watching a trailer or an ad. I'd think if he wasn't banned, he'd be trying to earn some extra bucks using these.
Then again, I could honestly see Phil being too lazy to claim bounties, or too anchored to his schedule to risk changing anything to accommodate bounties, since it always sounded like there was minimal time to plan for them/smart streamers would try and work it in when they were at peak viewership to get the most benefits. Based on some of those quotes, it also sounds like Phil was too lazy to look into the system and only considered sponsored stuff that was directly offered to him, which I believe is slightly different from the bounty system. It certainly wouldn't be the first time Phil turned down an easy opportunity to make money simply because it involved the slightest bit of effort on his part.
In any event, the point was Phil doesn't appear to be some Twitch employee's pet because he isn't getting the same offers for sponsored/event stuff like other people are, including smaller streamers who are likely getting those offers because they're actually someone's pet. The best case scenario for Phil is he maybe has someone on staff who genuinely likes him, but is savvy enough to recognize Phil is too toxic to try and promote. And if that's the case, I doubt they'd be willing to put their neck on the line for Phil in general.
Basically, it isn't a case of Phil getting special treatment so much as it is Twitch just being incredibly lax/nonexistent with rules enforcement, especially for smaller channels, and Phil just happens to benefit from that.
