Creators have emerged as a key strategy for the National Football League as it tries to broaden its audience beyond hardcore football fans in the US.
That strategy will be on full display at the Super Bowl on Sunday. The NFL invited a whopping 160 creators to the big game this year in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Working with creators isn’t entirely new for the NFL. But the league is ramping up its efforts, including by partnering with creators who don’t typically focus on sports, to reach Gen Z audiences. That includes fashion influencers who post what they’re wearing to the game and food creators who share their tailgating recipes.
The league has also been trying to expand its audience internationally by hosting games in countries like Brazil and Germany—and inviting local creators to attend. This year, the NFL said it will play nine international games across four continents and seven countries, up from seven games in 2025. Last year’s game in Brazil was also streamed globally on YouTube.
Max Klymenko is one of the international creators who will attend the Super Bowl. The Ukrainian creator, who lives in London, is best known for his “Career Ladder” series on social media where he tries to guess people’s jobs while standing with them on a ladder.
Klymenko is a fan of sports in general and has had athletes on his show, but it’s not the focus of his videos. He attended an NFL game for the first time in London in October.
“If you want to broaden your audience as a sport, you can’t just work with NFL creators,” Klymenko told Kaya at WebSummit Qatar earlier this week.
This was also evident in the NFL’s choice to pick Dhar Mann as its “Chief Kindness Officer.” Mann is best known for his scripted videos on YouTube, where he has more than 26 million subscribers. It’s tempting to dismiss the honorary C-Suite title as an attention grab, but Mann’s partnership with the NFL goes deeper than that. During Super Bowl week, Mann will lead a series of digital, social and in-person activations, including NFL Honors and YouTube’s flag football game.
The idea is to have a guaranteed source of social content to engage younger people, who may not be watching the main event on traditional channels—or at all.
“Sports content is exploding and diversifying, including sports journalism, alternative leagues and sports-adjacent content from creators,” Zach Miller, president of sports apparel company Bucketsquad, told Jasmine on stage this week at the IAB’s annual leadership meeting in Palm Springs, Calif. “As linear TV audiences age, this type of ‘shoulder content’ is a relevant way to engage young sports fans and their families.”
Bucketsquad is owned by basketball creator Jesser, who recently partnered with the NBA to be the “honorary commissioner” of its esports league NBA 2K.
The NFL said as much in a recent press release: “We have the unique opportunity to give creators the key to one of the biggest cultural events in the world, empowering them to create and distribute original NFL content to young audiences all over the world.”
As for Klymenko, he wouldn’t spill the details on his Super Bowl content plans, but said they would be “fire.” And, of course, he’ll be there with his ladder.
In related news…
MrBeast’s Super Bowl
Super Bowl viewers will also be able to catch MrBeast on their screens this weekend.
The mega YouTuber has partnered with live shopping startup Whatnot to host a livestream on Sunday as part of the company’s “Big Game. Big Deals” event. During the 60-minute show, MrBeast will give away over $1 million in prizes, including 2026 Super Bowl tickets and a Lamborghini Spyder. It will be hosted exclusively on the Whatnot app.
Last week, MrBeast also posted a video teasing his upcoming Super Bowl ad with Salesforce, saying “if you see the commercial, you might become a millionaire,” a nod to his over-the-top giveaway and game show content. With 30-second spots costing up to $10 million this year, nabbing high-profile stars is a common strategy for advertisers. In recent years, that has increasingly meant social media creators.
Brand Buzz: Oreo Edition
Oreo may be the most popular type of cookie in the world, but not if you ask ChatGPT.
The cookie brand only shows up in about 10% of responses from large language models when users ask questions like, “What’s the best cookie for a kid’s birthday party?” said Jennifer Mennes, global head of digital marketing, strategy and innovation at Oreo parent company Mondelez, during a session at the IAB meeting this week.
That means legacy brands can no longer rely on their incumbent advantage to stay top-of-mind as AI changes how people shop. It also means they need to lean into the platforms and people those answers are being pulled from, including YouTubers and users on Reddit.
We dove deeper into what this means for brands in our latest podcast episode, embedded below. You can also watch on Spotify—or listen wherever else you get your podcasts.
Tech Round Up
YouTube surpassed $60 billion in ad and subscription revenue in 2025, the first time the company has broken out total revenue for the video platform.
Creators are key to keeping up YouTube’s revenue growth in 2026: “We’re working really, really hard to further connect brands and creators, scaling sponsorships and enabling advertisers to showcase their products… during high-visibility spotlight moments,” Philip Schindler, senior vice president and chief business officer at parent company Google, said on a call with analysts after the company reported earnings on Wednesday.
🎂Happy 22nd birthday to Facebook! The app has fallen out of favor among the college kids it was originally intended for, but parent company Meta Platforms is an ad powerhouse. Meta’s revenue crossed $200 million in 2025, per the company’s fourth quarter earnings report, though much of its success is now thanks to Instagram.
Snap’s revenue grew by 10% in the fourth quarter of last year, beating analyst expectations. But executives faced tough questions from analysts on the company’s earnings call about how teen social media restrictions could affect the business.
Twitch’s first official podcast episode aired on Wednesday. The new show, called “Let’s Chat,” is hosted by the livestreaming platform’s CEO Dan Clancy. His first guest was Cameron Skattebo, a New York Giants running back who also livestreams on Twitch.
Pinterest fired several engineers who created an internal tool to track layoffs at the company, CNBC reported. The move comes after the company announced that it would lay off 15% of its staff by September as it moves resources to AI. A Pinterest spokesperson declined to comment on the firings to CNBC.
Spotify will start selling physical books on its app through a partnership with Bookshop.org. Audiobooks are one of the fastest-growing content formats on the app, with the number of people listening to an audiobook rising by 36% year over year in the third quarter last year, per the company.
Spotify and Pinterest report fourth quarter earnings next week. We’ll give you our full analysis of tech earnings once all the numbers are out.
Deals, Deals, Deals
ElevenLabs, a voice AI startup, raised $500 million in a new funding round led by Sequoia Capital. That brings its valuation to $11 billion, almost double from a year ago.
Netflix is continuing its deal spree. YouTuber Jordan Matter and his 16-year-old daughter Salish signed an exclusive deal to develop new and existing content into scripted, unscripted and animated shows. They’ll also work with Netflix on consumer products.
Hulu is getting into podcasting. The streamer inked an exclusive licensing deal for the comedy advice podcast “We’re Here to Help” hosted by Jake Johnson and Gareth Reynolds. The show will start streaming twice a week on Hulu beginning Feb. 10.
Regulatory Woes
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos name-dropped YouTube several times during an antitrust hearing about its proposed megamerger with Warner Bros. Netflix has long made the case that the market it competes in is much bigger than just streaming TV and that YouTube is its No.1 rival. In its fourth quarter earnings, Netflix also directly named Instagram as a competitor, partly to illustrate the breadth of its competitive market.
Creator Moves
Hank and John Green have donated their shares in their digital production company Complexly and turned it into a nonprofit. The company develops educational videos, including shows like Crash Course and science-focused SciShow.
“It’s never been easier to find information, but it’s also never been harder to know what to trust,” Hank Green said in a YouTube video explaining the decision. The Green brothers, who are OG YouTubers, were the sole owners of Complexly.
YouTuber Markiplier’s self-financed and distributed horror movie “Iron Lung” earned $21.7 million at the global box office during its opening weekend. That’s only about $10 million behind Disney’s “Send Help", showing traditional studio executives that there might be a place in the cinema for social media creators after all.
Sassy Chap Games, a creator-led gaming studio founded by two voice actors, signed with CAA.
Talent Tracker
Joanna Stern, a longtime tech columnist at The Wall Street Journal, is leaving the company to launch her own media company focused on consumer tech. Stern is the latest in a wave of journalists going independent.
Lucy Quick joined LinkedIn as senior creator monetization manager. Most recently, she was head of marketing, creators and agency success at creator membership startup Passes.
Rebecca Plotkin joined LinkedIn as a senior creator manager. Before that, she was creator marketing and community lead at Yahoo.
