During the fourth quarter of a Super Bowl dominated not only by the Seattle Seahawks but also commercials featuring huge names like Scarlett Johansson and Ben Stiller, mega-popular creator MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson (466 million YouTube subscribers), flashed onto America’s TVs and promised to make one lucky viewer a millionaire.
It was a bold, attention-grabbing moment that aligned with Donaldson’s long history of giving away millions of dollars to everyday people. But it also served as the latest example of the growing interest live sports organizations and networks have in creators.
On Sunday, the NFL brought over 160 creators to San Francisco’s Levi’s Stadium to be part of Super Bowl LX. The biggest creator collaboration in the history of the football league came after the NFL on Sunday appointed Dhar Mann (27 million YouTube subscribers) its Chief Kindness Officer tied to its “Be Kind to Your Rival” social campaign.
“The influencers and creators have played a very important role in keeping fans engaged in season and also during the off season,” Ian Trombetta, senior vice president of Social, Influencer and Content Marketing for the NFL, told TheWrap. “[Creators] have been great for us, especially as we reach more casual fans and younger fans.”
The creator invasion of the Super Bowl is not an isolated phenomenon, as sports aggressively court YouTube and TikTok stars in a bid to draw younger audiences to their broadcasts. For the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, NBCUniversal tapped 21 creator channels for its Creator Collective program, six fewer channels than the network partnered with for the 2024 Paris Olympics (partly because NBC did not partner with Overtime or Snapchat this time around). This is in addition to the 21 creator channels that are part of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s creator program.
“[Creators] bring live sports to the masses,” Britt St. George, co-founder of Smith + Saint told TheWrap. The creator-focused talent agency specializes in working with athletes who are interested in becoming creators. “It democratizes live sports and also creates a path for the new-age commentators of sport.”
Sports organizations partnering with creators often leads to exactly what Trombetta has seen — bigger, broader and younger audiences. But there are also several less quantifiable benefits to these collaborations. As more leagues, networks and agencies invest in both creators and creator athletes, it’s led to increased audience interest in lesser-covered sports, more devoted fanbases, a way for athletes to make money outside of traditional endorsements and growing loyalty between the creators and these organizations. It’s an emerging trend that’s quietly transforming the live sports ecosystem.
“A lot of the time, creators are translators for the sport,” Ayan Broomfield, a NCAA Division I Women’s Tennis Champion and creator with over 100,000 Instagram followers, told TheWrap. “Traditional media focuses on the results. Influencers focus more on the connection, the human side of the sport and how it fits into real life.”
Broadening audience reach
Six years ago, creator programs for NFL teams only existed in cities that already had a major concentration of creators and influencers, places like Miami or Los Angeles. Now nearly every city with an NFL team — including smaller markets like Jacksonville, Florida, and Green Bay, Wisconsin — has an influencer creator program. Connecting to local creators helps broaden regional audiences, while partnering with less obvious talent — like 12-year-old fashion creator Taylen Biggs (1.9 million Instagram followers) or cooking creators like Jack Mancuso, aka Chef Cuso (2.2 million YouTube subscribers) — helps broaden the demographic reach of the NFL.
“The purpose is to open up as many lanes as we can for fans to interact with our games and brand. Ultimately, that translates to players, clubs, partners, etc.,” Trombetta said. “It’s really a win-win because we’re also working with creators who have a real desire to work with the NFL, a specific team or player.”
This collaboration has also helped the NFL keep fans excited about football year round. Creators now share team schedules, turning what used to be a boring list of dates into a seasonal event. There’s also the NFL’s Creator of the Week program, which began with YouTube in 2023 and now includes Snapchat. The program highlights large and small creators who are fans of specific teams, giving them behind-the-scenes access to build excitement for games in the days ahead of kickoff.
Sometimes these collaborations can really blow up. A partnership between comedy creator Adam W and the New York Jets reached over 240 million views on YouTube Shorts. The sketch featured Adam W as a vendor so locked in on the game he keeps serving people the wrong order.
Partnering with creators and focusing more heavily on social media has also benefited NBC. Content from the 2024 Paris Olympics generated a record-breaking 6.55 billion social impressions across NBC Sports’ social channels with the Creator Collective directly generating over 300 million views. This return is a big reason why NBC is so focused on creators for Milan Cortina. It’s also a strategy that’s a natural evolution for the network.
“It’s somewhat similar to what we’ve been learning, ironically, around Bravo,” Jennifer Storms, chief marketing officer at NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, told TheWrap. “When you think about it, the ‘Housewives’ and the franchises that we have with Bravo, they are content creators. They are real humans, not actors and actresses. That’s been part of our DNA.”
What it takes to pick the perfect creator
The reason the NFL and Olympics’ creator programs have been so successful comes down to preparation. These organizations aren’t just going through a list of top creators and circling the people with the biggest followings. There is an intense amount of planning and research that goes into every collaboration.
For this year’s Olympics, the NBC team worked closely with their partners at YouTube, Meta and TikTok to select the right people. After coming up with the list, the NBC team held several conversations with creators to better understand who their core audience was, which events they were most interested in covering and what kind of content they wanted to post. This step was especially key for the geographically segmented Milan Cortina Olympics. So if a creator wanted to cover figure skating, the team made sure they were in Milan, but if they were more interested in documenting the vibes around the Dolomites, they were sent to the mountains.
“It’s us working closely with everybody to determine what fits, what makes sense and where are they going to get the best content to serve their fan bases? Because that’s why they’re coming over — to create the content that’s authentic to their fan bases,” Storms said.
The NFL’s program is similarly intense. The league speaks to each team’s club to pinpoint local creators who are fans. The organization also utilizes its “very sizable” social and influencer team to target emerging creator talent as well as the league’s social media partners and its agency, Whalar Group.
“We certainly respect the communities that they’ve built and their audiences, and that all comes back to how are we offering them the best creative opportunities for them to collaborate?” Trombetta said.
Also, because most athletes are younger and many are already fans of creators, these collaborations can lead to more authentic and engaging content. “We introduced Caleb Williams and the [Chicago] Bears to IShowSpeed,” he recalled, referring to the 2024 NFL draft. “There is just a level of respect there. Both of these guys, they’re at the height of their games. And there’s immediately a bond there.”
The rise of athlete creators
As creators become more commonplace in the sports world, more athletes are becoming creators.
“It’s a growing sector. We’re seeing some clients a bit more interested in it,” Britt St. George, co-founder of the social-focused talent agency Smith + Saint, told TheWrap. “We’re seeing a lot of these athletes crossing over into the creator space. I talk every day with agents and managers, and I’m getting pitched a lot of athletes.”
St. George believes the boom in interest is partially because of the double whammy of the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics. But it also has to do with the growing trend of Gen Z audiences being more interested in real-life events.
The NFL and NBC have both invested resources into helping interested athletes improve their social content. The NFL has the Live Content Correspondent program, a nationwide program that pairs camerapeople and social production teams with players. So if a player wants to post something like their workout routine, they can get professional footage of their reps at no additional cost.
As for NBC, prior to the Olympics, the network partnered with a handful of athletes who would be part of the games to boost their social content. Each athlete had weekly calls with the NBC team who walked them through insights they learned from NBCUniversal’s promotional engine, Symphony. For example, when NBC met with track and field star Noah Wyles ahead of the Paris Olympics, he was encouraged to post about fashion and track and field at a different time of the day based on findings from the promo engine. When he did that, Wyle’s engagement and follower count jumped.
“For us, it’s a sound investment because every person that hits follow on that athlete, we believe it translates into viewership of that athlete and the Games,” Storms said. She noted that helping these athletes with their creator careers has also had the unexpected benefit of making them more eager to partner with NBC on other requests.
For athletes, becoming a creator can be a safety net. Athletes routinely risk their bodies every day to perform incredible feats. While some are well paid on the professional level like MLB or NBA players, many are training for the Olympics while holding down a day job. There’s also a mental toll that comes with being the best. Because these people have devoted so much of themselves to their sport, many have a hard time seeing themselves as more than an athlete.
“For most people, they’re lucky if they reach one Games. Some will get hurt before that, and then they’re at a major crossroads where they’re wondering, ‘What do I do?’” St. George said. “People like Ilona Maher who are doing these things and paving the path from athlete to creator to entrepreneur to investor to founder are really important for other athletes to see and know that they can step outside of those boxes.”
It’s an evolution Broomfield has witnessed firsthand. When she first started posting, her content was strictly based on tennis. But the more she posted, the more her followers engaged with her behind-the-scenes content. Now the tennis champ focuses on her sport as well as lifestyle and fashion. She’s shared everything with her followers from the best sunscreen to combat the Australian sun to a series that spotlighted Black-owned brands and designers in honor of the 75th anniversary of Althea Gibson breaking the color barrier at the U.S. Open.
“Sports can really transcend through culture,” Broomfield said. “I do think it’s growing the sport, and it’s bringing in different demographics, cultures and age groups.”
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