MrBeast's Leaked Plan to Start a Mobile Network | YouTube's NFL Takeover | Creator Upload

0:00Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper. And I'm Joshua Cohen. Lauren. Yes. Your boy got out and about in New York City last week. I heard. I heard you went out. You were like where all the cool kids were. You went to the Colin and Samir event, which I did not go to. And like, I'm like, I know a lot of people went, but then there's like a few of us that didn't. And we're all like in the corner being like, wait, are we supposed to go to that? Like, what was my what is everybody doing? Tell us all about it. What was it? It was a cool event. You probably should have been there.

0:27Wednesday night, they kicked it off. they collaborated with YouTube that puts these creator collectives on all over the world. Do you know what a creator collective is? I mean, I don't know. You could probably use context clues. Sure. It is this event where YouTube brings - I know what those words individually mean, like together. Perhaps they mean something different than I assume. It's not like the hype house. It's like, what is this? It's like they bring creators collectively together in an environment to talk with each other, hang out, learn more about YouTube, share stories. So this is more like the actual literal, like collective.

0:59Okay, got it. Uh-huh. Yeah. And they have been sporadically all around the world. So this one was happening on a Virgin cruise ship. Right. That is docked in Manhattan on the west side, thankfully. So it was easy to get to coming from New Jersey. Thank God. And what I learned, something interesting, and this must happen all the time, where cruise ships before they take their maven voyage thousands of passengers they've got to test everything out right and so i think what virgin is doing i don't know if people pay for this or they just do it for free for big clients they basically do mock run-throughs of like dinner service breakfast service lunch service and more to make sure the ship is operating properly and everybody knows what they're doing so that's basically what happened youtube had this creator collective, published press attendees also were able to go to this thing.

1:52And we had basically drinks on the deck. I don't know boat lingo. Okay. I'm from Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. Sure. Right. I'm a desert rat. I love mountains. Yeah. Starbirds, afts. I don't know. I don't know any of those things are. Uh-huh. So I think we were on something called a deck. Okay. Okay. Have you been on a cruise before? You've been on a cruise, right? Years ago. Okay. Uh-huh. I'm not a huge fan. Go on. One of the big highlights was Richard Branson shows up. Oh, right. Right. What was that about? He was there, I think because this is a big cruise ship, this is a big initiative. And Virgin is his company.

2:31And Virgin is his company, yes. It was a big night. They had a bunch of, alongside the YouTube Creator Collective, there were also a bunch of, I think, like Virgin whales, Virgin cruise whales, like these big virgin spenders that go on like all these virgin cruise ships. Oh, so a whale meaning a person who like spends a lot of, a client that spends a lot of money. Okay, got it. I understand with the nautical theme, it could have been confused. That was very confusing. I was like, is that a type of boat? Are we talking a literal whale? Like were they on the boat? Like the whales were, okay. So you're talking about people who spend a lot of money.

3:04Yes. On cruises. And so they were there too. They had their own event. So I think Richard Branson was just there for all of it. Colin Samir gave him a quick interview at the beginning of the event. Was it unexpected that he was going? Or was it planned? It was a surprise guest. Oh, okay. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah. They had a champagne toast, which ran some poor champagne into Colin Samir's mouth. Really? As one does, yes. Now I'm really mad I wasn't there. And then that kicked off the first evening. The second day happened at the Domino's Sugar Factory in Brooklyn. Ooh. A little bit of a pain to get there from New Jersey.

3:40And featured one track, one full day's worth of programming and lots of great guests. Two surprise guests included Casey Neistat. Huge fan. Of Casey Neistat. Didn't I see he was virtual or am I making that up? No, he was there. He was there in person. Oh, maybe they just projected it. I saw pictures and face was on the screen. Okay. Uh-huh. And then the second surprise guest was Stephen Bartlett. He's the founder of Diary of a CEO. Incredibly impressive entrepreneur. than that was this podcast where he's interviewed everybody from like former CIA spies to Ray Dalio to Jimmy Fallon and more. And what was interesting is he talked about his process.

4:15So he said, among many other hints, tips, and tricks, that he researches his guests a lot. And to the point where he'll find out what kind of music they like. We take some tips from this too. Definitely. He figures out what kind of music they like. will have that music playing when the guest enters the studio. Let's put the guest in a good mood. He tracks the CO2 levels in the studio because if the CO2 gets above like 1 ,000 or 100 parts per million, I forget what the exact number is, it has scientifically, in lab studies, the same effect as having one beer. And so he monitors the CO2 levels and then circulates the air.

4:53I bet that's the shit they do in Vegas. You know how you walk into a Vegas casino and you just... I've heard that they pump something in the air to make you feel just like, oh my God. I think that's what they do. Seriously, I think that's what they do in Vegas. It's maybe the same kind of idea. You don't want to get the COT levels too high. I mean, if you're on a plane before takeoff and there's no oxygen circulating, you feel miserable, right? Miserable, yeah. Miserable. Sure. So we talked about those tips, hints, tricks. He also said he has a chief failure officer or a president of failure. Something with failure in the title.

5:26And he said basically as a company evolves, and gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it's more risk averse because it has more to lose. So how do you keep that kind of mentality, that rugged, experimental, entrepreneurial mentality in a big company as it gets bigger? You need to have somebody that's doing lots of different tests that is trying to fail as much as possible, presumably with good ideas. But fail the good ideas very fast in order to find the great ideas. These kinds of things were really interesting. Failure is a gift. No, I love it. I love it. That's so interesting. So, I mean, it sounds like it was a good event.

6:03It sounds like it was great. It was fantastic. Can't wait to go next year. First big story, we need to talk about YouTube's NFL broadcast. So really interesting. So YouTube broadcast, I think it was the first time they've ever done a regular season game, if I'm not mistaken, but it was in Brazil. It was between Kansas City Chiefs and the Chargers. and what was really interesting about it is that it drew an average minute audience of 17.3 million according to nielsa which is um it set a new record for the most watched live stream in youtube history but it's not necessarily huge as you know for nfl standards you know necessarily but from um a ratings perspective from a youtube perspective is huge also there were no technical glitches which people don't realize like that happens anybody with a love is blind reunion on netflix from like a couple of years ago, disaster.

6:50Or a Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight. There you go, right? I mean, I was sitting there with my gold goblet ready to watch the reunion. Like I had a friend over, we were like having a little party for Love is Blind and then it just didn't start. It was crazy, it broke Netflix. So I think, so what was really, it was, you know, this was a sort of monumental thing for the NFL to have this game on, but also they had unsurprisingly a lot of creators, first of all, in the sort of pre-show, if you will, There was a big spot with Jimmy doing this whole bit about having creators join NFL teams. And then they had kind of creators commentating on the sidelines for the game.

7:25And, you know, as you might imagine, a lot of sort of NFL purists didn't feel like this, you know, coverage was up to par, right, up to snuff in terms of the knowledge that these creators might have about the game. And so some creators that were like I Show Speed and Destroying, they definitely got more of a, you know, creator style off the cuff kind of, you know, commentary, but not necessarily as much sort of NFL knowledge. It's just interesting because, you know, I've thought a lot about this and like totally makes sense that this is what YouTube would do, obviously. But it also feels like one of those things like maybe I'm wrong.

8:04I wonder if you agree with me. It's like if it ain't broke, why fix it? But like, I don't think anybody had a problem with the NFL commentators, like people like former NFL players doing that, the Aaron Andrews of the world who have been like living and breathing this for decades. It's like that wasn't the thing that needed to be fixed, maybe putting out on a different platform, you know, blah, blah, blah. But like, I'm just sort of like, if you're going to have creators, I think, and I'm sure these folks know a lot about football, but like, you know, to comment on the field in live, especially, you know, in those moments is a real skill.

8:35So I don't know. I'm like, why are we trying this when it was not really what we needed to be fixed? Because it wasn't broken. Josh, do you even know what football is? Like, do you? And I'm not like, not football. Like, do you know what football is? I totally know what football is. I watch it passively. I think the last time I could say that anybody was on the team. Did you know that I danced in the Jacksonville Jaguars inaugural game in the pre-show and the halftime show? I think we've been talking about football for more than three minutes. So you're about right on cue for you to mention that.

9:04And then I think any other time we've discussed either Jacksonville for more than 90 seconds or maybe any sport for longer than three minutes. We get that. It's an amazing accomplishment. Yeah. Thank you. There's a photo. There's a video somewhere. Go on. So, Lauren, first I want to go back to the numbers because by and large, this game was okay in terms of a rating perspective. From like an overall macro NFL perspective, correct? Yes. Totally. Right. crushed youtube live streaming records for sure 100 blew it out of the water as far as it goes for an nfl game it did okay i thought it was gonna go bonkers legitimately just because it's free could be viewed around the world the super bowl gets 120 million views according to nielsen ratings i thought this was going to get higher than it did but maybe i had unrealistic expectations At any rate, in 2024, the average NFL broadcast reached 17.5 million viewers.

10:05This YouTube broadcast game had an average of an audience of 17.3 million. So basically on par with the regular game from last season. To put in a little bit of perspective, the opening game of the 2025 NFL season, which happened the day before on Thursday across NBC Networks and Peacock, had 28.3 million viewers. however the brazil game from last season youtube did beat that out it had something like 16 million viewers during that game i feel like this is like the first moment in like years that like broadcast has been like high-fiving each other because they finally beat youtube in something i think totally probably yes i mean they're probably ecstatic it's not like 50 million or something yeah they're showing that they still can have some leverage and some pull yeah and in In terms of the criticism that the game got, it did get a lot of flack from hardcore NFL fans who just want to protect the sanctity of the game.

11:03It's like the Torah. You don't want to mess with it. Things around the game you can mess with a little bit maybe, but you can't mess with people's football. Well, this is my whole if it ain't broke. It's just like, guys, some things are sacred. And so I think YouTube did a good job to the best of its ability to protect the sanctity of that. plus also incorporating creators in where they can. And it's almost this impossible task because you have this really hardcore NFL football fan that wants their football. And then you have YouTube that wants to incorporate YouTube-iness and creator stuff into the game.

11:45And for the first time they did it, I think they blended it really well. They had Destroying on the sidelines. He wasn't there to provide expert commentary. He was there to provide basically a fan slash creator POV. They had Hayley Bailey in the pregame show. They had Mr. Beast do a stunt. I think they tried all these different kinds of things and they'll figure out what works better in the future as they do more NFL games and as they do more of these types of events in general. One of the best pieces of creator content around this NFL game came from Marquez Brownlee, MKBHD. He has this short video.

12:22It's longer than 60 seconds. It's a couple of minutes and change where he talks about the tech inside of the NFL helmet, because there are two players at any given time in an NFL game that can have radio contact with the coach. And he talked about the tech that goes inside the helmet, how that radio signal gets encrypted when it gets cut off. Fascinating things that I think maybe really hardcore, sophisticated NFL fans already know about. Maybe they've been like, okay, yeah, I get this. But this is where I think YouTube can really shine with this kinds of things in the future is getting creators that can provide not just like some other type of entertainment, but some other type of educational component to this NFL broadcast.

13:03And that's a perfect example of that with Marquez Brownlee and MKBHD. Yeah. Speaking of, you know, creators, obviously like i mentioned jimmy was at um mr beast did a huge uh sort of promo video with the commissioner of the nfl around you know it was it mean i think just to take a step back like like we said nfl is such like a sacred sort of property and so allowing creators sort of into this world is actually a huge deal so we did this big bit with the commissioner of the nfl um and then like you know had all these creators who are clearly football fans like decide what team that they would want to be on and it was a whole shtick and and just even be able to use the likeness and the logos and all that sort of stuff.

13:39This is stuff that I know we sort of broken records, I feel like sometimes, but that would never have been possible in years past, the fact that this collaboration is happening. So really, really excited to see how this goes. But speaking of Beast, guess what? He wants to start his own mobile network because of course he does. But taking a step back, Beast Industries has many, many components. I mean, they've got you know, Feastables. They have Breesburger. That was like the one sort of, you could call it failure because they have a lot of issues with their partner on that. They have a new Lunchables, you know, they have a Lunchables competitor called Lunchly and on and on and on.

14:17So there's, you know, they're getting out of just the, obviously just media business with all these other factors, not to mention his like, you know, Amazon deals and all that kind of fun stuff. But, you know, it's not a profitable company. So they're spending about a hundred more than they're sort of bringing in, a hundred million more than they're bringing in. And so they're venturing into a lot of other territories that apparently their CEO is sort of like hoping will lead them to profitability. And one of them is a mobile network. Now, what's interesting is like technically, it's actually not that technically hard to start a mobile network, like much like Mint Mobile, which was Ryan Reynolds' company.

14:49But he actually came in later. But basically what you do is like essentially white label on top of other pre-existing mobile carriers and use the marketing power of a Jimmy Donaldson, Mr. Beast, or like a Ryan Reynolds, Mint Mobile, to do this. So the idea is that he, Business Insider, got their hands on a deck that sort of indicated that Jimmy is looking to get into the mobile game sort of business. And evidently, I actually didn't know, I guess Donald Trump has a mobile phone business. The smart list guys have one. I didn't even, I didn't realize that. In the deck, it says, the ultimate objective is to focus on the marketing and sales and outsource everything to a third party.

15:30What I think is interesting about that is, you know, it really shows like how Beast is ultimately like a marketing company, right? Like I think about, you know, Coca-Cola. Like I have a friend who works there now and she realized that like it's a marketing company. Yes, there's beverages, that's the problem. But it's like they're marketing a lifestyle. They're marketing a thought process. They're marketing, you know, and so Beast is marketing. Like, so whatever, and I know this is sort of obvious, But it's like, you know, you can it's not like it's like, oh, what is he going to offer that's different?

16:00And like, obviously, there's a lot of things that he could do. But ultimately, is the service going to be so different? No. But like he has this marketing engine that could be attached to very strategic things and blow up. So I think it's really I think it's interesting. We'll see if this actually happens. I think this is kind of like creator coffees from five or 10 years ago. Sure. Where basically you have made this previously kind of like scarce and hard to work with entity, now a commodity that basically anyone can kind of tap into if they have a big enough audience. Yeah. So what all these mobile brands have in common is that they're all basically renting space from major cell phone companies like Verizon, T-Mobile, AT &T, and then throwing it under their own names.

16:41It's called an MVNO, Mobile Virtual Network Operator. and these things have become presumably so easy to do. If you zoom out enough, I'm sure there'll be some mobile virtual network operators in the audience. They'll be like, actually, it's very difficult. I get it. But if you zoom out far enough, this has become like so easy to kind of integrate into that there are now companies out there that facilitate all different parts of this process as well. So you can be a Mr. Beast and come in and work with these other companies that know how to do this, that have done this before and you can get a mobile network up and running, blast it to your audience, hopefully get some subscribers and you're off to the races.

17:18What to do from there? Like how many mobile networks can the, I don't know, United States sustain? How big does it need to be before it gets swallowed up by another provider? What kind of perks you can offer, et cetera? That needs to be revealed. It did work for Mint Mobile and Ryan Reynolds. Well, it did. But also like, I think the article stated something like Mint Mobile got acquired by T-Mobile, but not necessarily because it was so successful. It was that they were in talks with Verizon and it was apparently like a defensive move. Like it would have been a really big blow to T-Mobile had they gone to Verizon.

17:51Sure. So it got big enough to the point where it could be an acquisition target. Sure, but it wasn't that it was so successful. And it's not like, and so that was a unique circumstance. Like if he builds something up, like it doesn't mean it's going to be acquired. You know what I mean? Like it's like, it's just like the right time, right place for a Mint Mobile because there was like, oh, you know, T-Mobile was like, oh my God, if we don't do this, we're screwed. And so like, and that's not an uncommon reason to do an acquisition. I'm just saying it's not because it was this crazy successful thing.

18:18Yeah, totally. That's my point. And can something in this sector work out for Jimmy and his audience as well as chocolate bar seemingly have? I mean, one never knows. We'll see. Okay, I want to quickly talk about something. We're going to get to uploads right now. And I think this is really important because I know that it's really important for you, Josh, to know about things that are happening near you. Because if you do leave your house that like it's not far, you were, you know, complaining about having to go to like the east side of Manhattan. Jordan and Salish Matter launched a skincare company as one done.

18:47Salish Matter is Jordan Matter's daughter. Jordan's been on our podcast before, big creator. And it's, there was a launch in a mall in Rutherford, New Jersey, right? I mean, I'm assuming you were there. Lauren, it's East Rutherford, New Jersey at American Dream. Same place where they did the beast thing, by the way. Same place. And apparently 60 ,000 teenagers showed up into your godforsaken town for this for this this law this launch like what is i mean this is i mean they couldn't my understanding is that like then salish couldn't even come out into the crowd because it was unsafe it was crazy 60 000 six just take a moment in a mall go to picture you're in the 90s you're in the mall it's the day after thanksgiving it's packed there wasn't even like a thousand people there.

19:38You know what I mean? Like maybe there was a thousand. 60 ,000 people in your cockamamie, godforsaken East Rutherford, New Jersey mall. Are you guys okay? First of all, it's one of, if not the biggest mall in terms of square footage in the United States. Of course it is. And it's New Jersey, which is like the home of like the best malls in the world. Like all due respect. And also amazing retail. Amazing. Breaking more to retail is alive and well in New Jersey. I mean, hello. Yeah. We can still, if you do come out, let me know. We'll go get a burger at the only freestanding physical Mr. Beast burger location in the world.

20:12I can't believe it's still there. Yeah. It's still there, people in line. And yes, I am surprised that this happened. But basically because Salish Matter is huge to a certain subset of people, not any of whom I interact with really on a social basis. She has been the number one celebrity on famous birthdays for years now. topping people like Kylie Jenner, any other Kardashian, Justin Bieber, Mr. Beast and more. And to see that manifest in a real world setting with tens of thousands of people showing up for her Sephora launch of her Sincerely Yours product line is pretty wild. So the first time I ever experienced anything like that was back in probably 2011, 2012.

20:59I was working with, you know, a small little creator named Shane Dawson. And we had produced, I did a short film with him. It was the first thing I did with him. And we arranged for a screening to happen at the Pacific Design Center, which is this big building in Los Angeles. And they have a screening room. And he tweeted out for fans to come. And like a thousand kids showed up. Yeah, that's wild. And I had been working with creators for a while, but I had never kind of seen, it was obviously super early days. and I'd never seen it in person, like what that was. And I was, I mean, I was like flabbergasted.

21:32So I just can't imagine that time. By the way, I was gonna say time 60 ,000 or whatever, time 60, but some reports are saying there was 87 ,000. I mean, I can't even like, that's like bigger than many towns. Yeah, the American Dream said that the pop-up broke the attendance records of past appearances by Mr. Beast and Haley Bieber. I mean, that's crazy. That's crazy. it's just so interesting about in like let's be real like how influential for lack of a better word like this cohort is but that is unusual this is she is a special snowflake here a certainly special snowflake yes very special yeah um anyway that's a i think that's an upload although for like i mean i just don't i mean how's the parking lot i mean it must be a mess there five dollars a pop they charge you oof good day for east rutherford yeah good day for east That's where their taxes are a little bit lower too.

22:23They get a lot of revenue from the stadium. So from the mall. Yeah, in the mall now. Yeah, okay. Lauren, one quick, I think, upload from the business world. Vimeo is being acquired by the Italian company Bending Spoons. Bending Spoons is this firm. They also own WeTransfer and Evernote. They have seemingly a penchant for picking up companies with big brand names that maybe are a little bit past their prime. and restructuring them to operate efficiently and effectively and I guess turn a profit. What I think is interesting here is just the trajectory of this. Vimeo launched earlier than YouTube in 2004.

23:01It was originally this like haven for independent creators that have like very artistic and that was really kind of came from the characters that started the company, including Jacob Lodwick, who eventually sold it to IAC. It's been an interactive core forever, then went public a couple years ago, had a stock price of$58 per share in 2021, right after its IPO, is going to be sold to Bending Spoons for around$7 and change per share. So we'll see what comes of it in the future. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, Vimeo has done a lot of stuff to build out their creator tools. And so they've definitely been going like harder in that direction.

23:42So it'll be interesting. Bending Spoons, like, you know, it has as one, as it happens with a lot of acquisitions, they have a habit of just sort of like cutting, trimming a lot of fat. They're based in Europe. And so they're getting rid of a lot of like US presence. So we'll see what happens with Vimeo. It's still, I think, a very viable and interesting platform and a lot going on there. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Doing a lot to power a bunch of creator S-Bot services, including huge ones like College Humor, which was also a former ISE company's now dropout brand. All right, Josh, I think we did it.

24:10Lauren, I think that's it. I'll see you just trying to perfect, I don't know, some type of, what, like, Les Mis NFL collab so you can be featured alongside the next YouTube broadcast of a game. I mean, that was a stretch. There's something there. Yeah. Workshop it. Okay. Or next week on Creator Upload. Today's show is produced by Lauren Schnipper, Joshua Cohen, that's me, and Adam Conner. It's edited by Adam Conner 2. Original music is by London Bridge. You can check them out on Instagram at London Bridge Music. Make sure you subscribe to Creator Upload right here on YouTube, on Apple Podcasts, as well as Spotify or wherever you're listening.

24:47While you're there, give us a rating and leave us a comment. If you want to talk, hit us up at info at creatorupload.com. If you like our show, recommend it to a friend. If you love it, just tell everyone. Thanks for listening to Creator Upload, and we will be back next week.