Good morning. As you read this, I’ll be flying across the country to NYC for our Cocktails With Creators event next week…and mentally preparing for a 40-degree temperature difference.

NYC folks, hit reply and give me your favorite cold-weather meal recommendations (I’m partial to Udon St. Marks).

— Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Last night, QTCinderella held the 6th Streamer Awards in Los Angeles, presenting awards across niches including speedrunning, crafting, and music. At the end of the night IShowSpeed was crowned streamer of the year for the third year in a row, giving his speech in Indonesian.

Why it matters: IShowSpeed has had an undeniable year—appearing in a Super Bowl ad, IRL streaming from over 20 countries, and touring the US for the World Cup. His global appeal, coupled with partnerships from some of the world’s most prominent brands, made him the perfect creator to represent how dominant livestreaming has become in the cultural zeitgeist.

Behind the ceremony:

Big picture: As we move into TwitchCon this weekend, the Streamer Awards is a strong indicator of the current state of livestreaming. With over 36 award categories—compared to the Academy Awards’ 24—this show demonstrates just how stratified livestreaming has become. It’s no longer a genre of content dominated by gaming, but an entire medium where any creator can find their audience. 

Barstool Sports’ Internet Invitational wrapped its second season yesterday, pitting 64 of the internet’s biggest golf creators and athletes against each other for a $4M prize pool.

We spoke with Brendan Jones, senior producer at Barstool Sports who led the three-month production to learn how they pulled it off → 

Earlier this year, the 2026 PGA tour averaged 2.7M viewers across CBS and NBC. 

The Internet Invitational drew over 41M views across six episodes released exclusively on YouTube via Barstool Sports, Fore Play Golf, and Bob Does Sports. 

So how does a YouTube production rival golf’s biggest events?

Filming took place over one week in early August. What became 21 hours of content started as 800+ hours of raw footage captured on 80+ cameras, 67 mics, 10 audio operators, three drones, and around 30 GoPros mounted in carts.

“That’s the most nerve-wracking part—making sure that you get everything on site,” Jones told us.

His system, borrowed from his MLB and NHL Network days, was to have ten editors cut every match hole-by-hole and log everything into one master sheet he could mine for story. 

“If you capture everything, you essentially have every storyline…then it’s just finding a needle in a haystack,” Jones said.

A two-person reality team cuts everything between rounds, while Jones works to make the final edit feel native to the platform.

“Natural banter and human interaction is the content that people can relate to, and I think that’s why the Internet Invitational is as successful as it is,” Jones said.

His advice for creators is to leave room to capture those in-between moments that can’t be manufactured. 

“Turn the cameras on and keep them rolling, because you never know what you’re gonna get,” Jones said.

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Not all views are created equal. But the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the digital ad industry’s biggest trade group, wants everyone to agree on what a “view” actually is. 

How it works now: Every platform counts views, impressions, and watchtime its own way, and brands rely on those numbers to decide how to spend advertising dollars with creators. 

The IAB’s new report calls this measurement discrepancy the “fault line beneath the creator economy,” and 2/3 of industry professionals surveyed named it a top issue for brands, platforms, and creators. The bureau hopes to get a few platforms to agree on a standard within a year. 

Why it matters: Because sponsor reads usually land mid-video, brands want view counts to be precise. Without standardized view counts, a brand might pay for viewers who stopped watching before the ad. That means marketers overpay and creators are held to expectations their integrations can’t meet. 

How we see it: If the brands paying for reach don’t trust the view count, every deal starts on shaky ground—and creators pay the price. Brand deals are the foundation of the industry, and the creator economy can’t keep growing at this pace without fixing measurement.

The content we’re looking forward to reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.