Creators & The World Cup (in our Neighborhood)

0:01Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper.

0:04Sam Gutelle:And I'm Joshua Cohen. Lauren? Yes. How often have you been tuning into the World Cup? In so much to know that U.S., as of this recording, won last night, but there was some, they kicked some guy out on our team that was like not, it was, my parents were discussing it, not, it was not a thing. Anyway, yes, I know they won. Questions? Yeah, Fularen Balagan got a red card that was kind of controversial. Yeah, apparently it was like, it was like mistake, like tripping. up the guy accidentally, right? Yeah, but you got to be careful. Accidentally. Ankles. Soccer players need them. And knees do, apparently.

0:38Yeah, no. So I know some things. I think we're all going to get more into it because they're kind of winning right now, right?

0:43Sam Gutelle:They are winning. This is the first time they've ever won a knockout stage match. To be fair, though, to history, this is the first year that the knockout stage has consisted of 32 teams instead of 16 teams. Okay. So that's put them exactly in the position they were before in terms of remaining teams in the tournament. If they win this next game against Belgium, then they'll be rocking it. To quote Josh, I don't think anybody tuned in for our sports analysis, but what's your point? So you know who else is watching World Cup games? Tell me. Like so many people in Brazil. Okay. And I'm bringing this up because Kaze TV, who is this Brazilian creator, got the rights to stream the Brazilian World Cup matches in Brazil.

1:26Sam Gutelle:Oh, wow. So many people have been tuning in that he has consistently, for each consecutive game, broken his previous record for most live concurrent viewers on the YouTube live stream. How did he get the rights? It must be in addition to like a network. Like, I don't understand. Lauren, that's a great question. So Kaze TV secured the broadcasting rights directly from global sports federations and leagues through Live Mode. So Live Mode is this very big Brazilian sports marketing and media rights agency. Basically, they worked with Kaze and they said, yo, FIFA, we're going to distribute the World Cup matches wherever we normally distribute them.

2:01Sam Gutelle:But also, have you heard about this thing called YouTube? Have you heard that all the young kids are on the YouTube? And we need to get where the young kids are. So we want to also distribute these on Kaze TV's YouTube channel, which has tens of millions of subscribers. And so what's happened is just this like onslaught of viewership. So in Brazil's first game of this 2026 FIFA World Cup versus Morocco, Kaze TV peaked at 12.4 million peak concurrent viewers. Then the second game, Brazil versus Haiti, 16.2 million. Third game, Brazil's 3-0 victory over Scotland, 18.3 million peak concurrent viewers.

2:38Sam Gutelle:And then in Brazil's match versus Japan, 21 million peak concurrent viewers. YouTube's NFL broadcast, when they had their game, they actually had a game from Brazil last year that they played. Right, right. That peaked at 19.7 million concurrent viewers. So this would arguably be like a little bit more. A little bit more. And this blows away any peak concurrent viewership record in YouTube or on Twitch by far. And what do we, you know, we were having discussions about like, is a viewer the same on TV versus this? Like when you say peak concurrent, like I know what that means, but like how long are those 21 million holding on to that?

3:21Like it's at a second, is that a minute? 21 million at how long?

3:25Sam Gutelle:So peak concurrent viewers mean at any time during the broadcast, this is the moment in time where the most amount of people were watching. So at this one moment in time, there were 21.1 million people watching this program. So that could arguably be for like a second? Sure, it could arguably be for a second, but if you want to estimate and average it out, Well, if we did have access to Kazi TV's YouTube studio, I think what we'd see is an estimation of average viewers of the live stream, about 13 to 15 million. So that means any minute during the live stream, there were at least 13 to 15 million people watching.

3:59This is just based on your institutional knowledge of the situation? Correct. I just want to know. I mean, people are going to ask. Institutional knowledge and recon.

4:04Sam Gutelle:They want to poke holes, Joshua. So I just want to understand where you're getting this information from. Well, I think you can say average generally sits at 60 to 70 percent of peak. Okay. And so that's what that equals out to. Okay, great. Okay, I just wanted to compare. You can compare that to the NBA Finals, which got a Nielsen rating, which we talked about last week, Lauren, of a 17 million. Yep. So this is on par with that for sure. This is the one time a creator event, which is arguably a mainstream event that's distributed through a creator channel, but still that you could compare kind of apples to apples to like this is getting television viewership.

4:34I want to talk a little bit about the deal. That's fascinating to me. So they effectively, World Cup effectively made a deal with like call it a legitimate old school kind of media organization as a part of that sort of package, that organization was like, cool, we're going to distribute everywhere, including also on a creator channel that they made a deal with. 100%. And I think that's genius. That part, that's the piece of this that I think is genius. And this is what I talked to with a lot of sort of the clients I work with in the traditional media space. It's like, it's all one big bucket of sort of entertainment.

5:01And you just have to have all the spokes on the wheel and a creator distribution channel, for example, is one of those spokes on the wheel. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do the other ones, but like not having that clearly one can see would be a big mess.

5:12Sam Gutelle:And Lauren, Kaze's not the only one. So iShowSpeed, the incredibly popular streamer, has also partnered directly with FIFA and presumably YouTube, where he can also co-stream matches that are distributed on his channel. So he's a huge Ronaldo fan. So during Portugal's opening match in the World Cup, he had 9.2 million peak concurrent viewers on his live stream. That's a lot. It's a lot, which just is a lot. That's a lot. And shows you how, especially for these big global events, these traditional entities are like more than willing to play with creators in this ecosystem in order to drive up viewership and excitement and increase their distribution and just like general coverage of the surface area of the entertainment ecosystem.

5:59OK, Josh, anything else happening as it relates to creators in the World Cup?

6:01Sam Gutelle:Lauren, I'm so glad you asked. So Unilever, who's the official personal care sponsor of this year's World Cup, said that they have their largest activation ever with over 50 ,000 creators in 120 markets and across 35 brands, including Dove, Rexana, Axe. And they've also distributed 180 limited edition products across the tournament's 39-day run. Catherine Fernandez, who is an executive at Dove, told Digiday, quote, this is a Super Bowl every two days, end quote. There's 48 teams in the World Cup, 104 matches, roughly 10 million people attending and expected global audience of 6 billion people.

6:39Sam Gutelle:And Unilever is capitalizing on this. And I think why it's worth mentioning is, one, Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez said last year famously he wants to commit 50 percent of the marketing budget across all his brands to influencer marketing and creators. And this, I think, is the first kind of global event that's happened since then that really shows that they're invested in this, where like it's not creator that creators are secondary or tertiary to whatever other marketing initiatives they have. This is like the core. And then everything else is built around it. I don't want to breeze by the sort of point that you made around this is like a Super Bowl every day.

7:17Sam Gutelle:Yeah. Yeah, that's huge. Because as you know, one knows that like, you know, live sports is like the last sort of remaining, you know, kind of opportunity for brands to really capture, you know, a ton of a mass amount of people at once, because obviously, you have to tune in, and it's live. And so Super Bowl, by that very fact is, you know, a very kind of it's one of the most expensive events until live sports generally is, you know, that's where you can like networks, etc, can command the most sort of dollars. and the fact that that's happening like every day right now is crazy and also just like i know the world cup hasn't happened in north america in a long time but like crazy how like people care now in this country like nobody cares about soccer like you know i mean i feel like i like credit to david beckham by the way who like kind of brought it over to miami and then like made it bigger i'm serious like it's like he was in la first too yeah but i'm just saying he brought it to the states and like um and i'm just like it's just it's sort of i think the whole thing is fascinating like a super bowl basically every day is insane if you think about the amount of people eyeballs advertising dollars and then just the amount of excitement around um football is really just kind of crazy and one other thing to note here lauren is it's worth saying that fifa is not like totally generous and they're not giving away these rights to every single creator that wants them xqc who's this incredibly popular streamer his real name is felix lengel he showed five seconds of a FIFA match on his live stream and then got a takedown notice and a ban from Twitch because he showed copyrighted content on his stream.

8:51It's unbelievable what Twitch will ban people for and what they won't ban people for. People can read into that statement however they like, which you can imagine how I feel about that.

9:00Sam Gutelle:So four days earlier, FIFA, Fox, and YouTube gave I Shall Speed the official match feed and then they give Twitch gives Felix a ban because FIFA said yo we don't want him showing our content. It's fascinating. I think it also shows like these people are very still protective of their rights. Yeah. And they want to maintain But Twitch didn't have to ban him. I understand taking down the content but banning him? They banned him? So he's like literally Well Twitch bans people all the time. So they ban them for like a set a period of time and then they can't A period of time. Okay. Yeah. When you say ban I was like forever.

9:33Yeah.

9:34Sam Gutelle:Twitch bans have a different context. Okay, sorry, I'm not a Twitch head. That's not a thing, probably. All right, a couple of platform updates. We haven't really kind of talked about platforms in a while, so I think this is sort of fairs, you know, discussing. So Adam Assari, head of Instagram, announced something called Your Algorithm, which is a feature that employs AI to bring more user choice to Instagram Reels feed to make your algorithm feel, quote, more present and useful. Instagram is adding quick signals to the Reels user experience. So they take the form of buttons that name content categories like sports, studying hacks, and day in the life.

10:08And when you swipe down on the Instagram feed, users can access the signals and choose the ones they like to see more often. It's interesting to note that while this is a feature that I think people have wanted for a while, Adam Mossori said, over time, we want your algorithm to feel like something you talk to rather than something that happens to you. Okay, I see what you're doing there. But what is very interesting to me is that sources are sort of saying, people as experts are saying that it was really kind of things like bans in Europe and all sorts of stuff that government forces that are sort of requiring platforms to include opt-out clauses for users who don't want any personalized recommendations.

10:48And obviously, there's all these lawsuits out there saying that platforms are knowingly using their algorithm to get users addicted to scrolling. So this is the type of stuff, we've been talking about this for a long time, that because all these lawsuits and things are going to have to change on the platform. So this is an example of that. To me, it's also a little bit frightening because it's like more and more people are going to be in their own bubble because they're just going to see what they want. And that would be fine if people were consuming content and things like news elsewhere, but they're not.

11:16So that's what's like a little troubling about this to me because it's just going to be more and more of like just exactly your opinion, just echo chamber, all that kind of stuff. That's where my cynical brain goes.

11:27Sam Gutelle:Lauren, that's a great take. I wonder how much more of an echo chamber your Instagram algorithm could be. I guess if you can tweak it to the degree that they seem to be saying you can. Well, I mean, it's interesting because like right now my feed is and I'm basically I'm off the app except like on the weekends. because I just try to protect my sanity. And it actually is helping a little bit. But when I go on, my feed is off campus, which is the most amazing show ever on Prime Video, starring like the most beautiful people on the planet. And like home decorating. Like those are my two things. And it's like, but it changes so quickly as to what I want.

12:05And it's like 100 % all of that. That's a little bit much. You know what I mean? Like I wouldn't mind a few other categories that I could like be like, okay, that's my off campus feed, but I'd like my decorating feed. and I'd like my whatever. You know what I mean? Like I feel like it's too intense right now in some ways. So maybe this will be better because you get different categories. I don't know, man. Who knows?

12:23Sam Gutelle:I have to also think too, if they show any decline in like average view duration or average session duration or the amount of time people are spending on the app, they're going to figure out a way to like make this so people actually consume more Instagram whenever possible. Speaking about platforms and meta, I got a ping the other day on my WhatsApp that said, we're going to start integrating usernames secure yours now. So I went to secure mine, which is the same one as my Instagram one, which I've had for a hundred years. And they said it wasn't available. I have a lot of questions. Someone's squatting on your WhatsApp username.

12:56Schnipstar. Somebody's already taken a Schnipstar. I'm like, I'm wondering if like, it's more like I need to log in from my Instagram via WhatsApp and like, it's already taken because it's on my Instagram. Like I would imagine because it's like, they're all connected. So I have a lot of questions. I'll be following up Meta. But yeah, so rather than using phone numbers as an in-app ID, WhatsApp users can now reserve a username that includes an at sign. The change will make WhatsApp URLs resemble usernames like platforms like YouTube and TikTok, where at signs is the typical starting point that handles.

13:26On the meta blog post, it says sometimes you just want to chat without handing over your digits. Oh, gross. I cannot believe they just said that. That's why we're introducing usernames for WhatsApp. Starting this week, you can reserve a username to use later this year when we launch this feature.

13:42Sam Gutelle:Oh, that's interesting. So someone can message you on WhatsApp through your username and not have access to your phone number? Yeah. I mean, it's effectively like how people slide into people's DMs. It's the same thing. I get it. I get it. I totally get it. I think there's... But I'm also just like at this point, like, what's the difference? I don't know. Totally. I think Meta's evolving with the times where they have a remote control. You know how you used to go to your friend's house and then they had a different remote control and it was like slightly off, but it still controlled the TV. but you didn't know how to work it.

14:12Sure.

14:13Sam Gutelle:It's like that. So we all need to like be the same thing. And then, so God forbid our brains have to like figure something out. Okay, cool. Cause that was such a terrible, that was a problem that needed to be solved. Go on. Work on this handle basis. And WhatsApp is the only one that doesn't. I know because it's not historically been a social media platform. And also like, why does Facebook want to get into the business of like adding more social media platforms to their arsenal when like they're the whole thing is like social media platforms are being like targeted and sued all the time i feel like whatsapp is the i don't know it's the get out of jail free card not really i think if you look at any of other of metas platforms one thing that they want to try to dominate as much as possible is text and dms and because that's where they lose market share the places like snap especially among younger audiences and they can capture more of it with whatsapp and make it a more like fun experience I want to talk about that for a minute.

15:07This notion that like a username is like somehow less sort of violation of sort of privacy violation. It's less private than a phone number. I was at a, this is a few years ago, and I was at this like women in media kind of a thing in LA. And we're talking about kids and this and that. And this one mom sort of raised her name. It's like, my kids, they really get it. They really care about privacy. Like they won't even give away their phone numbers. They only message people on Snap. And somebody had to raise their hand and be like, yeah, so messaging on a social media platform where they're like controlling all of your data and reading all of your messages is not more private than giving out your private phone number.

15:46Like it was just like this notion that that's somehow like more private. And oh, I like in like the idea of giving my phone number away, like, oh, like I would never. That's my secret. Like, you know, it's it's the problem is in the fact that the kids were doing it. The problem is that they had this sort of twisted notion that that was a more private experience, which it could not be less private.

16:06Sam Gutelle:Does feel very like Gen X millennial. Yes. I don't. Yes. And it was just very with his mom was sort of like trying to be like, oh, my kids are just they just get it. And we were just like, you and your kids do not get it. Right. Totally. So I feel like this is like the similar thing where it's like, oh, a username, like it's better than what it's like. It's not better. And I think this could signal just maybe WhatsApp is going to get more into the social media ecosystem. This is what this is what I was saying, which is like, why would men want to do that one? Like they're being sued. I'm like, right.

16:36I don't know. It's interesting. Josh, you love him. You know him. We've got Sam Gattel from TubeFilter coming on to talk about the latest and greatest. I love Sam's takes.

16:44Sam Gutelle:Yes, Lauren Tufilter's very own Sam Gattel is joining the program. He's going to tell us all about Mr. Rogers and what he's up to on the internet these days. Sam Gattel, welcome to the program. Hi, Lauren. Hi, Josh. Thank you for having me. Of course. Thank you for acknowledging me first. Go on. We saw you come in. You took off your jacket. You put on your cardigan. You took off your outdoor shoes, rolled into some slippers. Tell us what Mr. Rogers is up to on YouTube and the internet. Well, Fred Rogers died in 2001, but Fred Rogers Productions, the company that produced his show out of Pittsburgh for more than three decades, is now bringing his legacy onto YouTube.

17:25So this is a brand new channel. Fred Rogers Productions did it in partnership with Little Dot, a company that we know well around these parts. and they've brought tons of content to YouTube. So we've got classic episodes such as the famous Officer Clemens washing his feet with Mr. Rogers episode. That's one of the ones that's available in full on YouTube. We've got compilations of some of his best aphorisms and affirmations. And then we, in the future, we'll have perhaps some new original content mixed in. And obviously not featuring the man himself, but carrying on his legacy of kindness and compassion.

18:07So it's all it's awful episodes or is it like other shorts? Like, what's the what's the makeup? They do have some shorts as well. So, you know, they've taken some of some clips of Mr. Rogers talking about the importance of feeling your emotions, of treating each other with kindness. Sure. And they're just dropping those into your short speed, just sprinkling them in so that in between all the AI slop and all of the frenetic fast paced contents, you'll be able to slow down with Mr. Rogers and just get like a nice, cool breeze to the face, which we could all use during this heat wave in the US.