Good morning. Did you catch Mac McClung taking the NBA Dunk Contest by storm en route to a convincing win? Without the viral YouTube mixtapes from his high school basketball days, we might not have gotten to watch him dunk on the biggest stage.

— Hannah Doyle & Nate Graber-Lipperman

Nick Symmonds Hosts a $25,000 Fitness Competition

The two-time Olympian and YouTuber often referred to as “the MrBeast of fitness” is living up to his nickname with an upcoming video series that will have contestants compete in an American Ninja Warrior-type obstacle course for the chance to win $25,000.

The details: Filming will start Saturday, March 4th with the first video uploaded to his channel Friday, March 10th. The competition is open to the public, with shooting time and location disclosed on his fitness app:

• To incentivize training. The app breaks down every obstacle, and how to complete them.

• To manage turnout. By putting up a small barrier to entry (the app is free for the first seven days) Symmonds hopes that attendance will be more manageable for his four-person team.

“I don’t know if this is gonna hit or flop, but I feel like I owe it to the audience and this community to run it for an entire month and see what happens,” Symmonds told us.

How did he get here?

Symmonds spent the last six months building the course in an airplane hangar in Creswell, OR, spending $100,000 on the facility.

“Originally I reached out to companies like Rogue [to help finance the project] and they said it was just too unproven,” Symmonds told us. “They said ‘if this does well, we’ll help you with season two.’” So Symmonds saved up money over Q3 and Q4 last year, designed, and built the course himself, mapping out obstacles inspired by American Ninja Warrior, in which he competed in 2015.

Business by the numbers:

60/40 → income breakdown between AdSense and brand deals.

500,000 → number of new subscribers to the channel last year, topping 1 million total.

$2 million → how much gross revenue Symmonds aims to reach by the end of this year.

Big picture: Like many niches, fitness creators have high seasons and low seasons. Q1 is traditionally high due to the influx of viewers with exercise-related New Year's resolutions, but creators have to stay creative to maintain momentum throughout the year. For Symmonds? That’s starting a video series his subscribers have never seen from him before.

“We can build a great channel with a loyal audience and good content, but behind the scenes I know we need to periodize our content and every once in a while make jaw-dropping videos,” Symmonds said. “That’s what I’m hoping this obstacle course series will be—it’s like the Olympic Games for our channel.”

Instagram Rolls Out "Channels"

On Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new Instagram feature from his own personal account: a one-to-many broadcast chat called “Channels.”

The company is currently testing the feature with a select group of creators in the U.S. before rolling it out to all users over the next several months.

How it works: Not to be confused with other recent additions like Subscriptions or Notes, Channels lets creators send exclusive content to their entire audience through their Instagram inbox. Planned add-ons will include channel collabs with other creators and the ability to collect questions for an AMA.

Followers will be able to read, react, and vote in polls—though, interestingly, they can’t respond. As one writer jokes, “Basically, Instagram just invented the press release.”

What it means: Previously, the best way for creators to share updates with their audience on Instagram was over stories. That’s why other platforms like Community and Laylo have emerged over the last several years to help convert audiences into text or email lists where creators can message their fans on a level that feels more intimate.

Channels appears to be Instagram’s effort to exert the platform’s influence and take back some market share, offering creators a direct way to engage their followers and communicate within the confines of the app.

Chess YouTubers Form a Pro Chess Team

Two of the largest chess creators on YouTube are teaming up to compete in the Pro Chess League, an online global chess competition.

The details: GothamChess, the most-followed chess YouTuber with nearly 3 million subscribers, is joining Hikaru, a 5x U.S. Chess World Champion and streamer to form the Gotham Knights to compete weekly on ChesscomLive’s YouTube.

Zoom out: Chess has become one of the fastest growing YouTube niches, with video views and subscribers more than doubling from December to February for creators like GothamChess and BotezLive. Together, they had over 500 million views in the month of January alone.

Why? GothamChess cites a confluence of things—the rise in popularity of Chessboxing, posts from celebrities like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi playing chess, and the growth of chess creators over the last year.

👀 Creator Moves

• The Editing Podcast is hiring a video editor to help with storytelling and to collaborate with post-production supervisors.

• Jesser is looking for a Snapchat channel manager to work on the Jesser Reacts team.

• Zain Kahn is hiring video editors to help with short-form and long-form video.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Ashley Alexander launches a merch brand.

• FaZe Clan lays off 20% of its workforce.

• Kai Cenat signs with UTA.

• Khaby Lame is now on Shorts.

• Barstool Sports becomes 100% owned by casino operator Penn Entertainment.

• The Game Theorists launch a new YouTube channel, The Style Theorists.

• Meta tests paid verification for Facebook and Instagram.

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