Good afternoon. As a cherry on top of the most creator-forward World Cup in FIFA history, IShowSpeed opened the final match yesterday with a performance of his original song, “World Cup (Champions).”

The performance, with 12M views on FIFA’s YouTube channel, is currently outperforming the uploaded halftime show that featured Madonna, Shakira, Justin Bieber, and BTS.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Even the most successful creator businesses often lack the audience and market data to compare notes on monetization, audience growth, or platform changes with other creator peers. 

One person trying to build the operating tools and market data that creator businesses are lacking: Brian Flanagan, who just stepped down as President of Mythical after 2.5 years in the role and nearly a decade at the company.

Quick background: During Flanagan's time at Mythical, the company launched its fan subscription model, Mythical Society, acquired Smosh in one of the first major creator M&A deals, and helped grow Good Mythical Morning into an Emmy ballot contender. 

Rhett and Link, along with other creators, will serve as advisors and investors in his new venture.

Though Flanagan’s new company is still in stealth mode, we chatted with him about the data gap in the creator economy he’s setting out to fill →

The workaround (for now): Talk to each other. “Creators should be comparing notes regularly on audience growth, discoverability, algorithmic changes, new features, and developments at all the major platforms,” Flanagan said. 

It’s how Mythical started to fill its own data gap. The Mythical Census—an internal tool Flanagan calls “extraordinarily valuable” for understanding the brand’s global fandom—was inspired by conversations with creators and executives in other lanes of digital media, podcasting in particular.

Big picture: Until better industry data exists, your vast network is your market intelligence. Flanagan’s advice to creators: invest in IRL relationships with other creators and execs in your genre or city.

“I promise those doors are more open than you think and you'll learn something unexpected and new,” Flanagan said.

Kai Cenat’s Streamer University wraps its second year today, closing out a five-day production backed by over 15 advertisers—including Red Bull, YouTube, Twitch, and State Farm.

By the numbers:

1.2M → peak concurrent views, up from 700K last year. Last year recorded 27M hours of total watch time, with this year tracking to surpass those numbers.

500K → how many followers Streamer U students such as Suburbbaby, Lacy, and Wardrobewinter have gained during the event.

This year’s guest lineup mixed top streamers (Ludwig, JasontheWeen, Cinna) with traditional celebrities including T-Pain as club advisor, Lizzo as a professor, and Skai Jackson as a student. 

Big picture: Cenat has become a leader in what's possible for livestreams by building out a tentpole event, owning it outright, then making it bigger. Since Streamer U last year, MrBeast has staged a 50-streamer competition, niche casting has risen as a trend, and Polish creators raised $60M through a livestream charity event.

What’s next: The livestreaming market is projected to hit $318B by 2031—roughly four times its current size. Cenat has committed to making Streamer University an annual event, which means brands can now plan around it the way they plan around award shows and sporting events. 

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Creators keep signing with Netflix—but what does it look like when they actually get on the platform? Last week Netflix dropped its viewership numbers for the first half of 2026—showing how a handful of creators are performing. 

Note: Netflix calculates views by dividing total hours watched by a title’s runtime, so one “view” equals a full watch-through. In contrast, YouTube counts a view as someone who has clicked on a video and watched for 30 seconds. The platform’s numbers aren’t directly comparable—but YouTube figures provide a sense of each creator’s overall scale.

The Scorecard →

Ms. Rachel is Netflix’s most-watched kids title with 65M views—even outperforming the new season of The Night Agent. She’s been on the platform since January 2025, with episodes curated from her popular YouTube videos, where she pulled 328M views in the last 30 days.

Mark Rober’s CrunchLabs, a collection of his top YouTube videos, received 36M views on Netflix. He’s been on the platform since last August, and his deal includes videos from his YouTube archive with original programming. Over on YouTube, Rober drew 445M views in the last month.

Salish and Jordan Matter have 29M views across two seasons on Netflix, which is made up of 13 curated episodes from their YouTube archive. They signed with the platform in February with a deal that includes videos from their YouTube archive and original programming. In the last 30 days, they’ve received 373M YouTube views.

Big picture: Signing with Netflix doesn’t appear to cost creators their YouTube audience—Viewstats analytics for all three channels show an uptick in YouTube viewership in the last year. As Netflix steps up its pursuit of top talent, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw reports YouTube is debating whether it needs to respond—including funneling ad dollars towards select shows to fund programming indirectly.

Worth noting: Netflix will stop reporting viewership every six months and shift to annual reports, so the next read on recent signees like Mythical and Nick DiGiovanni won’t come until Q1 2027.