TOGETHER WITH

It’s Tuesday, and Prime Video is (allegedly) taking a page out of Netflix’s Squid Game playbook with the development of a dystopian reality show based on Fallout.

Today’s News

GAME ON

FIFA is bringing the soccer boom to Roblox

The game: As the next FIFA World Cup approaches, soccer content is set to become one of the biggest marketing trends of 2026. According to Nielsen, 37% of U.S. consumers say their interest in soccer will rise over the 18-month period surrounding the biggest-ever edition of the World Cup.

To take advantage of that hype, the tournament’s organizer is turning to Roblox. Gamefam—a company that works with independent creators to turn their Roblox games into licensed experiences—has launched a full-featured football simulator titled FIFA Super Soccer.

The Super Soccer update lets players choose official national team apparel and players within the game. Sportico reported that the game attracted 21,000 concurrent users after its branded name change, becoming one of the 70 most popular Roblox games. Before the switch, Super Soccer had averaged about 1.5 million gameplay sessions per day.

The context: FIFA’s decision to bring its branding to Roblox isn’t surprising. Due to ongoing scandals, unpopular World Cup host choices, and naked deference to a certain American president, the Zurich-based organization is short on public goodwill these days.

The FIFA video game series was one of the last pieces of positive PR the namesake org had left, but that ship sailed in 2022 when FIFA ended its long-term relationship with publisher EA. FIFA President Gianni Infantino is eager to launch a game that can rival EA’s ongoing franchise—and Roblox provides an opening to bring that competitor to market.

FIFA isn’t the only sports org aligning itself with sandbox platforms in hopes of wooing young consumers. There has been a boom of branded experiences on both Roblox and Fortnite, and the pro soccer world is paying attention. In 2024, for instance, English club Manchester City developed its own world within Fortnite.

🌟 SPONSORED 🌟

Turn old content into revenue with OpusSearch

Top creators and brands spend tens of thousands of dollars on clipping campaigns—but there’s an easier (and more affordable) way to turn your existing long-form content into new TikToks, Shorts, and Reels. 

With OpusSearch, you can search, clip, and remonetize any content from your video library. Here’s how it works:

1. Search anything from your catalog
OpusSearch’s infinite memory bank can instantly find everything you ever said or done on screen. Search your entire video library by topic, speaker, object, and more.

2. Be first to every trend
With real-time trend analysis, OpusSearch’s AI finds what’s trending and searches your content library to find videos that fit. Then, it clips that footage into upload-ready short-form content.

3. Unlock the power of viral moments
Creators shouldn’t have to burn themselves out to stay relevant. OpusSearch identifies related clips to create compilation videos, highlights reels, and more—so you can keep up with the algorithm without constantly creating new content.

Top brands and creators like Logan Paul, Audacy, Diary of CEO, and Univision are already producing up to 7x more content with OpusSearch. Now, it’s your turn.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• A recent report from Pew Research Center found that TikTok is now the top social app for news among 18 to 29-year-olds in the US, with 43% of adults in that age range regularly getting news from the platform. (Business Insider)
  
  

• Meta has acquired Manus, a buzzy Singapore-based startup dedicated to building AI agents. (TechCrunch)
  
  

• Mouthwash brand Listerine is celebrating the new year by recruiting Twitch streamers like officedrummer to create soundtracks using its products. (Media Post)
  
  

• Nvidia will pay $20 billion to acquire “non-exclusive technology licenses” from AI chip company Groq. (DigiTimes Asia)

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

Streaming viewers want to watch old shows—for free

The shift: 2016 was a standout year for streaming TV. HBO’s Westworld was an instant success, Amazon imported the BBC sensation Fleabag, Hulu provided a digital home for FX’s Atlanta, and Netflix turned Stranger Things into the year’s most notable sleeper hit.

As we head into 2026, the streaming TV landscape couldn’t look more different. There is no glut of acclaimed new shows, and the industry is on the precipice of consolidation, with Netflix looking to consume struggling rivals.

Recent Nielsen data shared by Bloomberg illustrates just how dramatic that shift has been. Since 2020, the shows that have captured the most U.S. streaming watch time aren’t buzzy new originals—they’re familiar favorites from network and cable TV. NCIS has accumulated 151.4 billion minutes of watch time over the last half decade, while Grey’s Anatomy has claimed 148.8 billon minutes of watch time.

Even the most popular streaming originals trail far behind those ‘00s debutants. Netflix’s Ozark, for example, ranked #1 on that list with 55.3 billion minutes of watch time, and Netflix’s own internal data has shown that its licensed TV library accounts for many of its most-watched programs.

The result: For the first time since Nielsen’s tracking began, none of the top ten most-watched streaming originals of the year were new shows.

The impact: Without splashy new originals to set premium services apart, their ballooning price tags have begun driving consumers to free alternatives like Tubi and The Roku Channel.

Two years ago, Nielsen data showed those hubs were generating similar traffic to Peacock and HBO Max; now, they account for nearly twice as much watch time.

SCROLL PATROL

Doomscrollr is rewinding to a time before algorithms

The platform: Over the last year, consumers have grown increasingly weary of recommendation algorithms. Dissatisfaction with infinitely scrolling feeds has led to the development of a depersonalized TikTok feed in Europe, enhanced the popularity of decentralized platforms like Bluesky, and motivated entrepreneurs like Patreon’s Jack Conte to redesign recommendation systems.

Now, Adam Ayers and Victoria de la Fuente are entering the arena. The husband-and-wife duo’s new platform, Doomscrollr, facilitates direct communications between creators and their followers—no algorithm necessary.

After attracting an investor base that includes WeTransfer Founder Nalden and former Accenture Senior Managing Director John Del Santo, Ayers and de la Fuente have invited a diverse group of creators to check out their startup. Those creator partners will receive their own personalized homepages, where social media posts, digital storefronts, Substack essays, and other updates are synthesized within a single, chronological feed.

Ayers, the former CTO of Yeezy, and de la Fuente, a luxury brand executive, designed Doomscrollr to fill a gap in their own social media feeds. With her motherhood brand Zillion Trillion, de la Fuente achieved a six-digit following—but that audience was fractured across multiple feeds. Doomscrollr looks to knit those streams together.

The pricing: Instead of advertising, Ayers says Doomscrollr is built “around a flexible freemium and paid pricing model” that allows creators to “get started for free and upgrade as their business grows.” He adds that the company is releasing “new features designed to help creators get discovered and grow faster” and that it will “actively help creators grow and retain their audiences” when they sign up for paid plans.

Shortly after launching Doomscroller’s freemium model, de la Fuente reported that more than 5,000 new users had signed up. One success story is fashion designer Christopher John Rogers, who has used Doomscrollr to build an email community of over 150,000 subscribers.

WATCH THIS 👀

Malcolm is back in the middle in a new trailer

The revival: Remember two articles ago, when we mentioned how much streaming viewers love old TV shows? Well, Disney is paying close attention to that trend.

In the interest of wooing millennial audiences, the entertainment giant is bringing a four-episode reboot of Malcolm in the Middle to Hulu and Disney+.

If you’re too young to remember the classic ‘00s sitcom, this teaser offers a solid example of the kind of family shenanigans that entertained millennial kiddos when they weren’t glued to their Game Boys or rolling around in Heelys shoes.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.