How the creator economy is changing traditional entertainment's discovery, distribution, and supply

The creator economy used to be an adjacent entertainment ecosystem to traditional entertainment. Those days are numbered – if not over already. Creators are now a foundational component in how traditional entertainment produces and distributes content at scale. Here are three examples of how creator economy talent and their playbooks are reshaping traditional entertainment infrastructure:

1. Employing the gatekeepers of fan communities (discovery) 

Fan creators are part of the discovery infrastructure for entertainment IP – especially those who can amass communities around their content with creative flair and skill. Among those are Mellie (uhbucky on TikTok) who has built an audience of more than 32,000 followers around her fan edits of TV shows including Heated Rivalry, an ice hockey romance on HBO Max. Her ability to produce video edits that connected with social media audiences at scale prompted HBO to hire her as an editor making trailers, promos, and recaps of their shows. Among her most popular Heated Rivalry edits is a video entitled Sweet Dreams, which has clocked 3.9 million views on TikTok.  

Takeaway: Fan creators are becoming a new layer in the creative workforce inside entertainment companies.

2. Consolidating creator channels into social-first franchises (supply) 

Global is one of the UK and Europe’s largest radio and outdoor advertising businesses. However, the company has also made strategic bets on the creator economy, including an investment in personality-led podcasting franchises (The News Agents; My Therapist Ghosted Me). This approach is now evolving into a buy-and-build strategy, where aligned YouTube channels are being bought and combined to create fandom-first media brands. The Overlap, which is majority-owned by Global and led by former Manchester United defender Gary Neville, has bought Mark Goldbridge’s The United Stand and That’s Football, arguably its biggest rival. Combined, it creates a network of channels with 6 million YouTube subscribers.

Takeaway: Global is buying creator-led media systems and consolidating them into their wider networks.

3. Positioning creators as distribution equals to Hollywood (distribution) 

Tubi is using creator partnerships as an engagement engine for their streaming service. To support the thousands of hours of TV show and movie content, the platform also licenses and commissions videos from dozens of content creators in the US and the UK. By giving creators equal weight in content discovery with TV shows and movies, Tubi provides an experience that closely aligns with how younger viewers watch content on social: They readily flit between creators, TV shows, and movies.

Takeaway: Tubi is collapsing the distinction between creators and TV at a discovery level.

Traditional entertainment’s embrace of the creator economy is no longer superficial. As creators build audiences at scale, entertainment companies are using their financial clout to hire, licence, and buy creator-led brands. The result is a convergence of playbooks, where traditional media and the creator economy are no longer separate forces, but part of a single interconnected video ecosystem.